wmmm&m^sssmmmmm^^^^aii 



rhe Message of Song 



William Grev Maxwell 



u 



''-.s- ^^' 









<^ -^ , V 



A co^'^. -^o. 



<^J^"''^\vN' 



^.^^ 



.'-^^ 



3 0' 






"•^ * .0 K 



^'- '^.c^^ 



o^ ^ 












.V ^, ' ^- 



v*^ 



.,*^' 



- v° 



K'Vi^s.^f 



0' 



%, v^^ 



vV ''^^ 



N C> 



•^^^ ■"» .''^1^' ^0^ 



.^:^ -^^ 



,^^-",%^»- 






} J'S- 1%J|^^ -^ 



t/' -c 



>.>' ^, 



'7 -V-- -^ 






'^-. ^^^ 

O. 






^^. 



O '^.'^^^ o?^ 



^OO^ 



,-0' 









°'h. 









■* ,'\ 






.\^ 



. .' .^^ 












^^;%i^: A^ ^" 



■ X*' J.,^9^. 



•V"' 



*-^ ^*. 






\"-'\f.^::>>. 









:^% 



cP\^ 



V 1 B ^ -^ 






OO^ 



o . -T*^ 



'&. 






cv <- 



-i-. 






<^^. ^..^-^ A^ 



^ o.^' 



.„ ^^/. 



,0-' 






-°'>. 



<;^ 




*-. .<^- 



■%-%^ 









■ ^^'i?' 



< . ^0 



0' 










/\ 



,v\> , N C ^ 







The Message of Song 



The 

Message of Song 

By William Grey Maxwell 

With Illustrative Poems selected by the Author 




PHILADELPHIA l^ LONDON 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1909 



'■niS' 



GOPTBiaHT, 1909, BY WiLLIAM GBEY MaXWELL 



Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company 
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. 8. 



C:CI.A2534 5 



TO MY MOTHER 



For kind permission to include poems in this 
volume the author's thanks are due to: Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company for poems of Longfellow, 
Lowell, Holmes, and Tennyson and for the lines 
from Bayard Taylor's Translation of Goethe's 
"Faust"; to D. Appleton and Company for 
poems by Bryant, and to John Lane Company 
for "The Shepherdess," by Alice Meynell. 



The Message of Song 

RELIGION and law have been supreme forces of 
impulse and restraint in human history. Both 
had their origin in the soul's necessities. But relig- 
ion has too often become set in creeds, while law, 
through the principles of equity, has steadily en- 
larged her domain, and become beautiful in power as 
the ultimate regulator of conduct. Law is equal to 
all material purposes inclusive of marking the con- 
fines of creed. But poetry supersedes both law and 
religion. Anchored within the veil she is sublime in 
inspiration, drawing from the eternal Mind suste- 
nance and beauty. 

Creeds in themselves are not expansive. They 
should be written in the wordless language of music, 
which Hfts the spirit to more beautiful life through 
aspiration. A religion, thus heralded, no science 
could despoil, for as this widens her boundaries the 
other still pierces the unknown beyond. True re- 
ligion, which is in reality the poetic, can not be 
chained by creeds and live. These are the bonds that 
stifle. Religion, like music, must utter her message 
untramelled, and this will be the more true and fruit- 
ful when pervasive as the air we breathe. The his- 
tory of creeds has been a tale of turmoil, of wasted 

7 



spirit energy, a blighting of holiness, for holiness is 
not separation from the world, but an alliance with 
the Lord who pervades all, a helping of Him to 
render the clay of Hf e subservient to Beauty. 

The discoveries in physical and mental laws may 
aid in securing the higher purposes of life, but in 
this way only are they of spiritual use. To fail 
of the ulterior aim, the dominion of Soul, is after all 
but a groping in the darkness. Alliance with the 
primal Spirit is the only true method of high warfare 
through all the universe, for then the inner forces 
become available and aid in the supreme design; 
peace of spirit, a revelhng in the Beautiful, an exist- 
ence which any God would surely deem worthy. 

Law and morals help us in clearing a way for the 
nobler thought. But they do no more. If we have 
the true poetic concept these become superseded in 
the personal existence — and functus officio when this 
higher pilot is at the wheel. 

Poetry, religion, art have birth in the ceaseless 
yearning for a resting place in universal Soul. The 
water that seeks the lake or ocean, while finding 
momentary quiet in these, still holds within itself 
the potency of further wandering. The obstructions 
of artifice do indeed impede and delay, but they do 
not destroy this potency : and when the barriers fall 
the onrush follows. And so the potency of spirit, 
lured from its home in the Deep, urges ever the re- 
turn. And though creeds, and laws and forces of 
earth may impede, yet this restless yearning, this 
soul potency, ever impels back to the natal Source. 

8 



CogitOy ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) would 
seem to be a sane basis for a philosophical structure. 
But a wider conclusion follows. I thinks therefore a 
thinking Power exists. And this is the true message 
of Song, guiding us to 

That God, which ever lives and loves 
One God, one law, one element 
And one far-oflf divine event. 
To which the whole creation moves. 

Polytheism was the world's childhood. Her ma- 
turer spiritual life is pantheistic, the belief in a 
supreme Power working everywhere, to express him- 
self in the Beautiful. And why working? This 
Power is clearly the most masterful of poets, for he 
has created highest beauty in both thought and 
form. Yet law is an element of him which cannot be 
evaded. He may not make twice two other than 
four, nor the less to contain the greater. He may 
not turn time back, nor stay man's journey into the 
shadows of eternity. Nor can he give to man free- 
dom of volition with certainty of holiness. Law is 
dominant of him and all his works. The supreme 
lawyer, therefore, is he who knows the divine code. 
And the wisely happy man is he who harmonizes with 
it : for in this way he shall be able to aid in the splen- 
did work of evolution into spiritual beatitude, a labor, 
which in the nature of things must be eternal, though 
ever attended by the radiance of Beauty. 

That there exists a moral obligation to do the 
right seems to be an innate principle. What is right 



is a question involving many elements, and may be 
discovered by both thought and intuition. Here the 
true poet becomes indeed a creator, for the ardor of 
his conceptions, unaided by process of reasoning, 
flames a pathway into the domain of spirit, illuminat- 
ing all, and bringing in its trail a vital peace, a 
sentient knowledge, a potent being. 

Wine, religion, and love have ushered into re- 
treats of the insane, in equal portions, two-thirds of 
all their inmates: a royal band of pilgrims, surely, 
that might well be journeying to the shrine of the 
Saint. And this sombre bit of statistics serves to 
teach us two lessons : first, that some mysterious soul 
energy works through the mechanism of brain, more 
or less perfectly as this responds to the music of life, 
like a material medium which may fade and decay; 
and second, these marvellous necromancers, love, re- 
ligion, and wine, weaving the dull things of existence 
into romance, give us a vision of the true ecstasy, 
and reveal the vast realm of Beauty, the Soul's do- 
main. We should care for the culture of the brain, 
that receiving instrument of rapturous sound, and 
regard the mere toil of existence as of time only. 
And so, like the siphon which, cleared of the imped- 
ing air may set flowing waters otherwise inaccessible, 
these stimulated flights from earth, revealing to us 
a world more beautiful, may set moving the flow of 
song from hence, the only sane delirium in all earth's 
barrenness. 

And these sad statistics of the insane suggest 
many spiritual queries. The decay or absence of 

10 



mental faculties because of brain deficiency, and their 
return to normal action when the nerve organism 
becomes sound, would seem to indicate some power 
beyond, which works through these physical media, 
an elusive and eternal force, indeed, which can flit 
to and fro in harmony with the structure and condi- 
tion of the brain. The material sustenance remains 
the same. How then may mental faculties depart 
and return.? The poet alone seems to solve this 
question, not by logical process, but by a divine 
intuition. He does not philosophize. He simply 
sings that 

All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. 

Song builds a spiritual creed unfettered. The 
limitless faith in the Power that inspires, In wood, 
in sky, in flower, and in man — that evolves the soul- 
ful melodies of lark and nightingale, the mighty 
music of the ocean's roar, or paints the lily and the 
rose. No creed in anything but universals can stir 
the world, " or wake to ecstasy the living lyre." Be- 
lief in man's religious fabrications now wanes like a 
groping moment in the eternity of Truth, and soon 
must pass away. Supernatural revelation, so-called, 
is meaningless. If it is within the scope of man's 
intelligence to comprehend Truth when revealed, there 
must also reside within his nature the potency of its 
discovery. 

When the delicate mechanism of hearing is 
clogged by the ravages of disease or physical defect, 

11 



the waves of sound will not arouse the nerve sentinels 
of the brain, and no voice penetrates. And so when 
this wondrous enginery of the soul itself is deadened 
by lust or sloth the waves of spiritual song, floating 
forever across the universe, knock in vain at the 
spirit's portal. There is no response. All is death 
within. Yet a Beethoven whose mortal ear was 
closed to sound, but whose mechanism of brain rang 
true, could still hear the music of ethereal space, the 
harmonies of a divine orchestra. 

To be a poet does not demand setting one's 
thoughts to measure. Poetry is the vast ocean of 
spiritual Beauty and he who bathes in this must 
indeed partake of inspiration, whether he utters or is 
silent. To sing is the talent, to feel is the substance 
itself. The spirit of Song may well exclaim, " Be- 
fore the world was, I am." Jesus, himself, who had 
no technical knowledge of metrical laws, was a master 
Poet. He heard well the divine message in all its 
truth and beauty. His sweet Song has thrilled the 
ages — so potent has it been even where imprisoned 
in creeds — and thus forced to languish behind the 
bars. Here are some of this Seer's sonnets: 

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin 
not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was 
not arrayed like one of these. 

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. The 
kingdom of God is within you. 

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 

Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven. 

12 



Not here nor at Jerusalem. They that worship the Father 
must worship him in spirit and in truth. 

Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost? That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that 
Cometh into the world. 

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship 
him in spirit and in truth. 

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither 
moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break 
through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will 
your heart be also. 

Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be 
in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. 

They that are whole need not a physician; but they that 
are sick. 

The life of Jesus was itself a beautiful poem, and 
brought to the world the eternal message of Song 
that all life is a manifestation of divine energy, 
seeking expression in a material world. This con- 
ception of life as the expression of Soul through 
bodily forms militates against the destruction of 
such media of this energy, striving to reveal itself. 
Such destruction when necessary to a worthier exist- 
ence may find excuse, though, perhaps, not justifi- 
cation. But what is to be said of that brand of 
mental organism which wins pleasure in these ravages 
for any purpose? 

Far more innately vicious must be the species of 
brain in which any satisfaction can supervene upon 
the mere wanton removal from life of other lives. 
Can such a brain mechanism respond to true courage '? 

13 



Very likely in the lonely wilderness, far from the 
eyes of man, such spirits would cower in any equal 
contest with the mute denizens of Nature's solitudes. 
And everywhere they would hesitate to enter a battle 
where the weapons are keenly even. 

The Almighty must have moments of sorrow 
when he contemplates that after long cycles of living 
and decay, after all efforts to produce Man, there 
still cling to the clay of his mechanism primeval ob- 
structions that impede the nobler efforts and accom- 
plishments of Soul. 

In the collection from Shakespeare^s Sonnets 
it clearly appears that the poet sang of the all- 
animating Spirit, showing by varied fancies the 
uniform method and result of marriage with the 
creative Soul in the generating and inspiration of 
eternal Beauty. Nature has provided for the pro- 
duction of physical offspring, through marriage of 
the body. And so, through a nobler love, the Crea- 
tor has arranged for the generating of children of 
the Soul, his own ideal progeny, music, poetry, relig- 
ion. This collection of songs is made not only to 
illumine the passing hour, and bring a transient j oy , 
happy as that purpose would be. It is hoped that 
the Message of Song will help us to listen more effec- 
tively to the music of the boundless spirit Deep for- 
ever beating upon the shores of life, and perhaps 
that wordless singing will tell us, more vividly than 
all philosophers and creeds, that Divine life is every- 
where, that it is limited in manifestation by the ob- 
structions of clay alone. And that in some mysteri- 

14 



ous way each lesser soul may aid in breaking down 
these barriers, and emerge into the light and free- 
dom of his proper element where, " Through the deep 
caves of thought he may hear a voice that sings " — 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 

Till thou at length art free. 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 



Selected Poems 



Overture 



For we believe the poets, it is they 
Who utter wisdom from the central deep, 
And, listening to the inner flow of things, 
Speak to the world out of eternity. 

Lowell 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar 

When I put out to sea. 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep 

Too full for sound and foam. 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell. 

And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 

When I embark! 

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar. 

Tek-ntson" 



19 



Selected Poems 

From Shakespeare's Sonnets 

XVIII 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: 
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 
And summer's lease hath all too short a date; 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 
And often is his gold complexion dimmed: 
And every fair from fair sometimes declines. 
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed 
But thy eternal summer shall not fade 
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; 
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: — 
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 
21 



XXIX 

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes 
I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope 
Featured like him, like him with friends possess't, 
Desiring this man's art, and that man's, scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising 
Haply I think on thee, and then my state. 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate: 
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

XXX 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought. 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste; 

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow. 

For precious friends hid in death's stateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long-since-cancelled woe. 

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight. 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan. 

Which I now pay as if not paid before : 

But if the while I think on thee, dear Friend, 
All losses are restored, and sorrows end. 
22 



XXXI 

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, 
Which I by lacking have supposed dead; 
And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts. 
And all those friends which I thought buried. 
How many a holy and obsequious tear 
Hath dear-religious love stolen from mine eye, 
As interest of the dead, which now appear 
But things removed, that hidden in thee lie! 
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live. 
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, 
Who all their parts of me to thee did give; 
That due of many now is thine alone: 
Their images I loved I view in thee, 
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. 

XLII 

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief. 

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly: 

That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, 

A loss in love that touches me more nearly. 

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye: 

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her; 

And for my sake even so doth she love me. 

Suffering her friend for my sake to approve her. 

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain. 

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; 

Both find each other, and I lose both twain, 

And both for my sake lay on me this cross 

But here's the joy, — my friend and I are one; 

Sweet flattery! — then she loves but me alone. 



LII 

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key 

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, 

The which he will not every hour survey 

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. 

Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare. 

Since, seldom coming in the long years set, 

Like stories of worth they thinly placed are, 

Or captain jewels in the carcanet. 

So is the time that keeps you as my chest, 

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide. 

To make some special instant special blest. 

By new unfolding his imprisoned pride. 

Bless'd are you, whose worthiness gives scope. 

Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope. 

LIII 

"\\^at is your substance, whereof are you made. 
That millions of strange shadows on you tend? 
Since every one hath, every one, one shade. 
And you, but one, can every shadow lend. 
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit 
Is poorly imitated after you; 
On Helen's cheek all cut of beauty set. 
And you in Grecian tires are painted new: 
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year; 
The one doth shadow of your beauty show, 
The other as your bounty doth appear; 
And you in every blessed shape we know. 

In all external grace you have some part. 

But you like none, none you, for constant heart. 
24, 



LIV 

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem 
By that sweet ornament which truth doth givel 
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 
For that sweet odour which doth in it hve. 
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye 
As the perfumed tincture of the roses, 
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly 
When Summer's breath their masked buds discloses : 
But, for their virtue only is their show. 
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade: 
Die to themselves, Sweet roses do not so; 
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made; 
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, 
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth. 

LV 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
Of princes, shall outlive the powerful rhyme; 
But you shall shine more bright in these contents 
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time. 
When wasteful war shall statues overturn. 
And broils root out the work of masonry, 
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn 
The living record of your memory, 
'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity 
Shall you pace forth : your praise shall still find room 
Even in the eyes of all posterity. 
That wear this world out to the ending doom. 
So till the judgment that yourself arise. 
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. 
2S 



LVI 

Sweet love renew thy force: be it not said 
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite 
Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd, 
To-morrow sharpened in his former might: 
So, love, be thou: although to-day those fill 
Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fulness, 
To-morrow see again, and do not kill 
The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness. 
Let this sad interim like the ocean be 
Which parts the shore, where two contracted — new 
Come daily to the banks, that, when they see 
Return of love, more blest may be the view: 
Or call it Winter, which, being full of care, 
Makes Summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more 
rare. 

LVII 
Being your slave, what should I do but tend 
Upon the hours and times of your desire? 
I have no precious time at all to spend, 
Nor services to do, till you require. 
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour 
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, 
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour 
When you have bid your servant once adieu; 
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought 
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose. 
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of naught 
Save, where you are, how happy you make those. 
So true a fool is love, that in your will, 
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill. 
26 



LVIII 

That god forbid that made me first your slave, 

I should in thought control your times of pleasure, 

Or at your hand th' account of hours crave, 

Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure ! 

O, let me suffer, being at your beck 

Th' imprisoned absence of your liberty: 

And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check. 

Without accusing you of injury. 

Be where you list, your charter is so strong, 

That you yourself may privilege your time: 

Do what you will, to you it doth belong 

Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. 

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell; 

Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well. 

LIX 

If there be nothing new, but that which is 
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled, 
Which, laboring for invention, bear amiss 
The second burden of a former child! 
O, that record could with a backward look. 
Even of five hundred courses of the Sun. 
Show me your image in some antique book. 
Since mind at first in character was done 1 
That I might see what the old world could say 
To this composed wonder of your frame; 
Whether we're mended, or whe'r better they. 
Or whether revolution be the same. 

O, sure I am, the wits of former days 
To subjects worse have given admiring praise. 
27 



LX 

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore 
So do our minutes hasten to their end; 
Each changing place with that which goes before, 
In sequent toil all forwards do contend. 
Nativity, once in the main of light, 
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned. 
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, 
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound. 
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth. 
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow; 
Feeds on the rareties of nature's truth, 
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: — 
And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand 
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. 

LXI 

Is it thy will thy image should keep open 

My heavy eyelids to the weary night.? 

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken. 

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? 

Is it thy spirit that thou sendst from thee 

So far from home into my deeds to pry. 

To find out shames and idle hours in me, 

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy? 

O, no ! thy love, though much, is not so great : 

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake; 

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat. 

To play the watchman ever for thy sake: 

For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere. 
From me far off, with others all too near. 



LXII 

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, 
And all my soul, and all my every part; 
And for this sin there is no remedy. 
It is so grounded inward in my heart. 
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, 
No shape so true, no truth of such account; 
And so myself mine own worth do define, 
As I all other in all worths surmount. 
But, when my glass shows me myself indeed, 
Bated and dropped with tann'd antiquity, 
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read: 
Self so self-loving were iniquity. 

'Tis thee myself that for myself I praise 
Painting my age with beauty of thy days. 

LXW 

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced, 
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age, 
When sometime lofty towers I see downrazed. 
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage. 
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore 
And the firm soil win of the watery main, 
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store, 
When I have seen such interchange of state 
And state itself confounded to decay. 
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 
That Time will come and take my Love away. 
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose, 
But seeks to have that which it fears to lose — 



LXV 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, 
But sad mortality o'ersways their power. 
How with this rage shall Beauty hold a plea. 
Whose action is no stronger than a flower? 
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out 
Against the wreckful siege of battering days, 
When rocks impregnable are not so stout. 
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? 
O fearful meditation ! Where alack ! 
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? 
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, 
Or who his spoil of Beauty can forbid? 
O none, unless this miracle have might 
That in black ink my Love may still shine bright. 

LXIX 

Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view 
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend ; 
All tongues, the voice of souls give thee that due, 
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend, 
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd: 
But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own. 
In other accents do this praise confound 
By seeing further than the eye hath shown, 
They look into the beauty of thy mind. 
And that, in guess. They measure by thy deeds: 
Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes 

were kind. 
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: 
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, 
The solve is this, that thou dost common grow. 
30 



LXXIII 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 
As after sunset fadeth in the West; 
Which by-and-by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all the rest. 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
Consumed with that which it was nourished by. 

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more 
strong. 

To love that well which thou must leave ere long: 

LXXIV 

But be contented: when that fell arrest 
Without all bail shall carry me away. 
My life hath in this line some interest, 
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. 
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review 
The very part was consecrate to thee: 
The earth can have but earth, which is his due; 
My spirit is thine, the better part of me: 
So, then, thou hast but lost the dregs of life. 
The prey of worms, my body being dead : 
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife. 
Too base of thee to be remembered. 

The worth of that is that which it contains, 
And that is this, and this with thee remains. 
31 



LXXV 

So are you to my thoughts as food to life, 

Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground; 

And for the peace of you I hold such strife 

As twixt a miser and his wealth is found; 

Now proud as an en j oyer, and anon 

Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; 

Now counting best to be with you alone, 

Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure; 

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, 

And by-and-by clean starved for a look; 

Possessing or pursuing no delight 

Save what is had or must from you be took. 

Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day. 

Or gluttoning on all, or all away. 

LXXVI 

Why is my verse so barren of new pride, 
So far from variation or quick change? 
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside 
To new-found methods and to compounds strange? 
Why write I still all one, ever the same, 
And keep invention in a noted weed, 
That every word doth almost tell my name, 
Showing their birth, and whence they did proceed? 
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, 
And you and love are still my argument: 
So all my best is dressing old words new, 
Spending again what is already spent: 
For as the Sun is daily new and old, 
So is my love still telling what is told. 
32 



LXXVIII 

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse, 
And found such fair assistance in my verse, 
As every ahen pen hath got my use, 
And under thee their poesy disperse. 
Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing 
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly. 
Have added features to the learned's wing, 
And given grace a double majesty. 
Yet be most proud of that which I compile, 
Whose influence is thine, and born of thee: 
In others works thou dost but mend the style. 
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be: 
But thou art all my art, and dost advance 
As high as learning my rude ignorance. 

LXXXI 

Or I shall live your epitaph to make. 
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten ; 
From hence your memory death cannot take, 
Although in me each part will be forgotten. 
Your name from hence immortal life shall have. 
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die; 
The earth can yield me but a common grave. 
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. 
Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read: 
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, 
When all the breathers of the world are dead: 
You still shall live — such virtue hath my pen — 
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths 
of men. 
3 33 



LXXXVII 

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, 
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate: 
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; 
My bonds in thee are all determinate. 
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? 
And for that riches where is my deserving? 
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, 
And so my patent back again is swerving. 
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not know- 
ing* 
Or me to whom thou gav'st it else mistaking; 
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing 
Comes home again, on better judgment making. 

Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter; 

In sleep, a king; but waking, no such matter. 

XCVII 

How like a winter hath my absence been 
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeing year! 
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, 
What old December's bareness everywhere! 
And yet this time removed was summer time: 
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase. 
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime 
Like widowed wombs after their lord's decease; 
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me 
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit: 
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee. 
And thou away, the very birds are mute: 
Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer 
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. 
34 



XCVIII 

From you have I been absent in the spring, 
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, 
That heavy Saturn laughed and leap'd with him. 
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
Of different flowers in odor and in hue, 
Could make me any Summer's story tell, 
Or from that proud lap pluck them where they grew : 
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white. 
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose: 
They were but fleeting figures of delight 
Drawn after you; you, pattern of all those. 
Yet seemed it Winter still, and, you away. 
As with your shadow I with these did play: 

XCIX 

The forward violet thus did I chide: 

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that 

smells, 
If not from my love's breath.? The purple pride 
W^hich on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells 
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed, 
The lily I condemned for thy hand; 
And buds of mar jorum had stolen thy hair: 
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, 
One blushing shame, another white despair; 
A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both. 
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath; 
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth 
A vengeful canker eat him up to death. 
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see 
But sweet or color it had stolen from thee. 
35 



c 

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long 
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? 
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song. 
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? 
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem 
In gentle numbers time so idly spent: 
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem. 
And gives thy pen both skill and argument, 
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey. 
If Time have any wrinkle graven there: 
If any, be a satire to decay. 
And make Time's spoils despised everywhere. 

Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life: 
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife. 

CI 

O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends 
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed? 
Both truth and beauty on my love depends: 
So dost thou too, and therein dignified. 
Make answer. Muse, wilt thou not haply say. 
Truth needs no color, with his color fixed: 
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay; 
But best is best, if never intermixed? 
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? 
Excuse not silence so: for't lies In thee 
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, 
And to be praised of ages yet to be. 

Thou do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how 
To make him seem long hence as he shows now. 
36 



CII 

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seem- 
ing: 
I love not less, though less the show appear: 
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming 
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere. 
Our love was new, and then but in the Spring, 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays; 
As Philomel in Summer's front doth sing. 
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: 
Not that the Summer is less pleasant now 
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night. 
But that wild music burdens every bough. 
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. 
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue. 
Because I would not dull you with my song. 

CIV 

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
For, as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
Such seems your beauty still, three Winters cold 
Have from the forests shook. Three Summers' pride. 
Three beauteous Springs to yellow Autumn turn'd 
In process of the seasons I have seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand. 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand. 
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: 
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred. 
Ere you were bom was beauty's summer dead. 
37 



CVI 

When in the chronicle of wasted time 
I see descriptions of the fairest wights, 
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme 
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights; 
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best 
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 
I see their antique pen would have exprest 
Ev'n such a beauty as you master now. 
So all their praises are but prophecies 
Of this our time, all, you prefiguring; 
And for they looked but with divining eyes. 
They had not skill enough your worth to sing: 
For we, which now behold these present days. 
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. 

CVIII 

What's in the brain, that ink may character. 
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? 
What's new to speak, what new to register. 
That may express m}^ love, or thy dear merit? 
Nothing, sweet boy: but yet, like prayers divine, 
I must each day say o'er the very same: 
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, 
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name. 
So that eternal love in love's fresh case 
Weighs not the dust and injury of age, 
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place. 
But makes antiquity for aye his page: 

Finding the first conceit of love there bred. 
Where time and outward form would show it dead. 



CIX 

O never say that I was false of heart, 
Though absence seemed my flame to quahfy: 
As easy might I from myself depart, 
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: 
That is my home of love; if I have ranged, 
Like him that travels, I return again. 
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged. 
So that myself bring water for my stain. 
Never believe, though in my nature reigned 
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood. 
That it could so preposterously be stained 
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good: 
For nothing this wide universe I call. 
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all. 

CX 

Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there, 

And made myself a motley to the view. 

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most 

dear. 
Made old offences of affections new; 
Most true it is that I have looked on truth 
Askance and strangely: but, by all above. 
These blenches gave my heart another youth. 
And worse essays proved thee my best of love. 
Now all is done, save what shall have no end: 
Mine appetite I never more will grind 
On newer proof, to try an older friend, 
A god in love, to whom I am confined. 

Then give me welcome, next my Heaven the best. 
Even to thy pure and most, most loving breast. 
39 



CXII 

Your love and pity doth th' impression fill 
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow; 
For what care I who calls me well or ill, 
So you o'ergreen my bad, my good allow? 
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive 
To know my shames and praises from your tongue: 
None else to me, nor I to none alive, 
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong, 
In so profound abyss I throw all care 
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense 
To critic and to flatterer stopped are 
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: 
You are so strongly in my purpose bred. 
That all the world besides methinks are dead. 

cxv 

Those lines that I before have writ do lie. 
Even those that said I could not love you dearer: 
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why 
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. 
But, — reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents 
Creep in 'twixt rows, and change decrees of kings, 
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpest intents, 
Divert strong minds to th' course of altering 

things : — 
Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny. 
Might I not then say. Now I love you best, 
When I was certain o'er incertainty. 
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? 
Love is a babe: then might I not say so. 
To give full growth to that which still doth grow ? 
40 



CXVI 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove; — 

O no! it is an ever fixed mark 

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wandering bark. 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be 

taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: — 
If this be error, and upon me proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

CXLVI 

Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 
Foiled by those rebel powers that thee array. 
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer death. 
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 
Why so large cost, having so short a lease. 
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess. 
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? 
Then Soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store: 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross: 
Within be fed, without be rich no more: — 

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men. 
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.! 
41 



From The "Tempest" 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I; 

In a cowslip bell I lie: 

There I crouch when owls do cry: 

On the bat's wing I do fly 

After summer merrily. 

Merrily, merrily shall I live now 

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough! 

Under the greenwood tree 
Who loves to live with me, 
And tune his merry note 
Unto the sweet bird's throat — 
Come hither, come hither, come hither! 
Here shall he see 
No enemy 
But winter and rough weather. 

Who doth ambition shun 
And loves to live in the sun. 
Seeking the food he eats 
And pleased with what he gets: — 
Come hither, come hither, come hither! 
Here shall he see 
No enemy 
But winter and rough weather. 



Full fathoms five thy father lies: 
Of his bones are coral made: 
Those are pearls that were his eyes; 
Nothing of him that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea change, 
Into something rich and strange. 
Sea nymphs hourly sing his knell: 
Hark! now I hear them, — 
Ding, dong, bell. 

Shakespeare 



4S 



Beyond The Veil 



Thej are all gone into the world of light! 

And I alone sit lingering here: 
Their very memory is fair and bright, 

And my sad thoughts doth clear: — 

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, 
Like stars upon some gloomy grove. 

Of those faint beams in which this hill is drest, 
After the sun's remove. 

I see them walking in an air of glory, 
Whose light doth trample on my days: 

My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, 
Mere glimmering and decays. 

O holy Hope! and high Humility, 

High as the heavens above! 
These are your walks, and you have shew'd them me. 

To kindle my cold love. 

Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the just, 

Shining no where, but in the dark: 
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, 

Could man outlook that mark! 
44 



He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may 
know 

At first sight, if the bird be flown: 
But what fair well or grove he sings in now, 

That is to him unknown. 

And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams 

Call to the soul, when man doth sleep; 
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted 
themes 
And into glory peep. 

Henry Vaughan 



45 



Elegy Written in a Country 
Churchyard 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 

The plowman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
And all the world a solemn stillness holds. 

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight. 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r. 
The moping owl does to the moon complain 

Of such as, wandering near her secret bow'r, 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade. 
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap. 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing mom. 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed — 
46 



For them no more the blazing hearth shall bum, 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care; 

No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; 

How jocund did they drive their team afield! 
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave. 

Await alike th' inevitable hour: 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault 
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, 

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted 
vault 
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 

Can storied urn or animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? 

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust. 
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death.? 

47 



Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page 
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; 

Chill Penury repress'd their nobler rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood, 

Some mute inglorious ]\lilton here may rest. 
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise. 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land. 

And read their history in a nation's eyes — 

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; 

Forbade to wade thro' slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind: 



The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
To quench the bhishes of ingenuous shame, 

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride 
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife 
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray: 

Along the cool, sequestr'd vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 

Yet e'n these bones from insult to protect 
Some frail memorial still erected nigh. 

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture 
deck'd, 
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, 
The place of fame and elegy supply: 

And many a holy text around she strews, 
That teach the rustic moralist to die. 

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey. 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned. 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful clay, 
Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind? 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies. 
Some pious drops the closing eye requires: 

E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries. 
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. 
4, 49 



For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonored dead, 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate: 

If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 

Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate: — 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
" Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dew away 
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 

" There at the foot of yonder nodding beech 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high. 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch. 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 

" Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove. 

Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, 

Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 

" One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill. 
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree ; 

Another came; nor yet beside the rill. 

Nor up the lawns, nor at the wood was he ; 

*' The next with dirges due in sad array 

Slow through the church-way path we saw him 
borne, 
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn ; " 
50 



THE EPITAPH 

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth 
A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown, 

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, 
And INIelancholy mark'd him for her own. 

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send; 

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear, 

He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wished) 
friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose. 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 

(There they alike in trembling hope repose) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 

Thomas Gray 



She was a Phantom of delight 

When first she gleamed upon mj sight; 

A lovely Apparition, sent 

To be a moment's ornament; 

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; 

Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; 

But all things else about her drawn 

From May-time and the cheerful dawn: 

A dancing shape, an image gay. 

To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 

I saw her upon nearer view 

A spirit, yet a Woman too! 

Her household motions light and free, 

And steps of virgin-liberty: 

A countenance in which did meet, 

Sweet records, promises as sweet: 

A creature not too bright or good 

For human nature's daily food. 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles. 

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 

And now I see with e3^es serene 
The very pulse of the machine: 
A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
A traveller between life and death. 
The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 
A perfect Woman, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort, and command; 
52 



And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel light. 

Wordsworth 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove: 
A maid whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love. 

A violet by a mossy stone 

Half hidden from the eye! 
Fair as a star when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be: 
But she is in her grave, and, oh, 

The difference to me! 

Wordsworth 

Three years she grew in sun and shower; 
Then Nature said, " A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown: 
This Child I to myself will take : 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

Myself will to my darling be 
Both law and impulse: and with me 
The girl, in rock and plain, 
53 



In earth and heaven, in glade in bower, 
Shall feel an ever seeing power 
To kindle and restrain. 

" She shall be sportive as a fawn 
That wild with glee across the lawn, 

Or up the mountain springs; 
And her's shall be the breathing balm. 
And her's the silence and the calm 

Of mute insensate things. 

" The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her; for her the willow bend: 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Ev'n in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

" The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round. 
And beauty bom of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

" And vital feelings of delight 
Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell: 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 
While she and I together live 
Here in this happy dell." 
54 



Thus Nature spake — The work was doii( 
How soon my Lucy's race was run! 

She died, and left to me 
This heath, this calm and quiet scene: 

The memory of what has been. 
And never more will be. 

Wordsworth 



55 



Ode To Duty 



Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! 

O Duty! if that name thou love 

Who art a light to guide, a rod 

To check the erring, and reprove; 

Thou who art victory and law 

When empty terrors overawe; 

From vain temptations dost set free, 

And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! 

There are who ask not if thine eye 
Be on them: who, in love and truth 
Where no misgiving is, rely 
Upon the genial sense of youth: 
Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot, 
Who do thy work, and know it not: 
Oh ! if through confidence misplaced 
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around 
them cast. 

Serene will be our days, and bright 
And happy will our nature be 
When love is our unerring light, 
And joy its own security. 
And they a blissful course may hold 
Ev'n now, who, not unwisely bold, 

56 



Live in the spirit of this creed; 

Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need. 

I loving freedom, and untried, 

No sport of every random gust. 

Yet being to myself a guide. 

Too blindly have reposed my trust: 

And oft, when in my heart was heard 

Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd 

The task, in smoother walks to stray; 

But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. 

Through no disturbance of my soul 

Or strong compunction in me wrought, 

I supplicate for thy control, 

But in the quietness of thought: 

Me this unchartered freedom tires; 

I feel the weight of chance desires: 

My hopes no more must change their name; 

I long for a repose that ever is the same. 

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face; 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds. 
And fragrance in thy footing treads; 
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; 
And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee are 
fresh and strong. 

57 



To humbler functions, awful Power! 
I call thee: I myself commend 
Unto thy guidance from this hour; 
Oh let my weakness have an end! 
Give unto me made lowly wise, 
The spirit of self-sacrifice; 
The confidence of reason give; 
And in the light of Truth thy Bondman let me live. 

Wordsworth 



58 



A Lesson 

There is a flower, the lesser Celandine, 

That shrinks like many more from cold and rain, 
And the first moment that the sun may shine. 

Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again ! 

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, 
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest. 

Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm 
In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest. 

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I past. 
And recognized it, though an altered form. 

Now standing forth an offering to the blast. 
And buffeted at will by rain and storm. 

I stopped and said, with inly-muttered voice 

" It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold ; 

This neither is its courage, nor its choice, 
But its necessity in being old. 

" The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew ; 

It cannot help itself in its decay: 
Stiff in its members, wither'd, changed of hue," — 

And in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray. 
69 



To be a prodigal's favorite — then, worse truth, 
A miser's pensioner — behold our lot! 

O man! that from thy fair and shining youth 
Age might but take the things Youth needed not ! 

Wordsworth 



England and Switzerland 

Two voices are there: one is of the Sea, 

One of the Mountains; each a mighty voice: 
In both from age to age thou did'st rejoice, 

They were thy chosen music, Liberty! 

There came a tyrant, and with holy glee 

Thou fought'st against him, — but hast vainly 

striven : 
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven, 

Where not a torrent murmur's heard by thee. 

Of one deep bHss thine ear hath been bereft: 
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left — 
For high souled Maid, what sorrow would it be, 

That Mountain floods should thunder as before. 
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore. 

And neither awful Voice be heard by Thee! 

Wordsworth 



61 



The Green Linnet 

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 
Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 
With brightest sunshine round me spread 

Of spring's unclouded weather. 
In this sequester'd nook how sweet 
To sit upon my orchard-seat! 
And flowers and birds once more to greet, 

My last year's friends to-gether. 

One have I mark'd, the happiest guest 
In all this covert of the blest: 
Hail to thee, far above the rest 

In joy of voice and pinion ! 
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array 
Presiding Spirit here to-day 
Dost lead the revels of the May; 

And this is thy dominion. 

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, 
Make all one band of paramours. 
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, 

Art sole in thy employment: 
A Life, a Presence like the air 
Scattering thy gladness without care, 
Too blest with any one to pair; 

Thyself, thy own enjo3rment. 
69 



Amid yon tuft of hazel trees 
That twinkle to the gusty breeze, 
Behold him perch'd in ecstacies 

Yet seeming still to hover: 
There! where the flutter of his wings 
Upon his back and body flings 
Shadows and sunny glimmerings 

That cover him all over. 

My dazzled sight he oft deceives — 
A brother of the dancing leaves; 
Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves 

Pours forth his song in gushes; 
As if by that exulting strain 
He mock'd and treated with disdain 
The voiceless Form he chose to feign, 

While fluttering in the bushes. 

Wordsworth 



To The Cuckoo 

O blithe new-comer! I have heard, 

I hear thee and rejoice: 
O cuckoo! shall I call the Bird, 

Or but a wandering Voice? 

While I am lying on the grass 
Thy two-fold shout I hear; 

From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
At once far off and near. 

Though babbling only to the vale 

Of sunshine and of flowers, 
Thou bringest unto me a tale 

Of visionary hours. 

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! 

Even yet thou art to me 
No bird, but an invisible thing, 

A voice, a mystery: 

The same whom in my school-boy days 

I listen'd to; that cry 

Which made me look a thousand ways 

In bush, and tree, and sky. 
64 



To seek thee did I often rove 

Through woods and on the green; 

And thou wert still a hope, a love; 
Still long'd for, never seen! 

And I can listen to thee yet: 

Can lie upon the plain 
And listen, till I do beget 

That golden time again. 

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace 

Again appears to be 
An unsubstantial, fairy place. 

That is fit home for Thee ! 

Wordsworth 

The World is too much with us; late or soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; 
Little we see in Nature that is ours; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 
The winds that will be howling at all hours 
And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers, 

For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 

It moves us not. Great Power! I'd rather be 

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, — 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn: 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 

Wordsworth 
5 66 



To The Skylark 



Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! 

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? 
Or while the wings aspire, are heart and eye 

Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? 
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will, 
Those quivering wings composed, that music still! 

To the last point of vision, and beyond 

Mount, darling warbler! — that love-prompted 
strain 

'Twixt thee and thine a never failing bond — 
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain: 

Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege ! to sing 

All independent of the leafy Spring. 

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood: 

A privacy of glorious light is thine, 
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood 

Of harmony, with instinct more divine: 
Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam — 
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. 

Wordsworth 



66 



The Reaper 

Behold her, single in the field. 

Yon solitary Highland Lass! 
Reaping and singing by herself; 

Stop here, or gently pass! 
Alone she cuts and bends the grain, 
And sings a melancholy strain; 
O listen! for the vale profound 
Is overflowing with the sound. 

No nightingale did ever chaunt 

More welcome notes to weary bands 
Of travellers in some shady haunt, 

Among Arabian sands: 
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
Breaking the silence of the seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides. 

Will no one tell me what she sings? 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
For old, unhappy, far-off things. 

And battles long ago: 
Or is it some more humble lay, 
Familiar matter of to-day? 
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain. 
That has been, and may be again! 
67 



Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang 

As if her song could have no ending; 
I saw her singing at her work, 

And o'er the sickle bending;- — 
I listen'd, motionless and still: 
And, as I mounted up the hill. 
The music in my heart I bore 
Long after it was heard no more. 

Wordsworth 



The Daffodils 

I wander'd lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host of golden daffodils, 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees. 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 

They stretch'd in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay: 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance 

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced, but they 
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: — 

A Poet could not but be gay 
In such a jocund company! 

I gazed, — and gazed — but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought. 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood. 

They flash upon the inward eye 
Which is the bliss of soHtude: 

And then my heart with pleasure fills. 

And dances with the daff^odils. 

Wordsworth 



With little here to do or see 

Of things that in the great world be, 

Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee 

For thou art worthy, 
Thou unassuming Common-place 
Of Nature, with that homely face. 
And yet with something of a grace 

Which Love makes for thee! 

Oft on the dappled turf at ease 

I sit and play with similes. 

Loose types of things through all degrees. 

Thoughts of thy raising: 
And many a fond and idle name 
I give to thee, for praise or blame 
As is the humour of the game. 

While I am gazing. 

A little Cyclops, with one eye 
Staring to threaten and defy. 
That thought comes next — and instantly 

The freak is over. 
The shape will vanish, and behold ! 
A silver shield with boss of gold 
That spreads itself, some fairy bold 

In fight to cover. 

I see thee glittering from afar — 
And then thou art a pretty star. 
Not quite so fair as many are 
In heaven above thee! 
70 



Yet like a star, with glittering crest, 
Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;— 
May peace come never to his nest 
Who shall reprove thee! 

Sweet Flower! for by that name at last 

When all my reveries are past 

I call thee, and to that cleave fast, 

Sweet silent Creature! 
That breath'st with me in sun and air, 
Do thou as thou art wont, repair 
My heart with gladness, and a share 

Of thy meek nature! 

Wordsworth 



n 



By The Sea 



It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; 
The holy time is quiet as a Nun 
Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 

Is sinking down in its tranquility; 

The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea: 
Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
And doth with his eternal motion make 

A sound Hke thunder — everlastingly. 

Dear child ! dear girl ! that walkest with me here, 
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought 
Thy nature is not therefore less divine: 
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, 

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 
God being with thee when we knew it not. 

WOEDSWORTH 



72 



To Sleep 



A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by 

One after one: the sound of rain, and bees 
Murmuring: the fall of rivers, winds and seas. 

Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky; 

I've thought of all by turns, and yet to lie 
Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies 
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees, 

And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. 

Even thus last night, and two nights more T lay, 
And could not win thee. Sleep! by any stealth: 
So do not let me wear to-night away: 

Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth? 

Come, blessed barrier between day and day. 
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health! 

Wordsworth 



73 



The Inner Vision 

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 

To pace the ground, if path there be or none, 
While a fair region round the traveller lies 

Which he forbears again to look upon: 

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, 
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone 

Of meditation, slipping in between 

The beauty coming and the beauty gone. 

If Thought and Love desert us, from that day 
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse: 

With Thought and Love companions of our way — 
Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, — 
The mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews 

Of inspiration on the humblest lay. 

Wordsworth 



74 



Written in Early Spring 

1 heard a thousand blended notes 
While in a grove I sat reclined, 

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 

To her fair Works did Nature link 

The human soul that through me ran: 

And much it grieved my heart to think 
What Man has made of Man. 

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, 
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; 

And 'tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes. 

The birds around me hopp'd and play'd, 
Their thoughts I cannot measure, — 

But the least motion which they made 
It seem'd a thrill of pleasure. 

The budding twigs spread out their fan 

To catch the breezy air; 
And I must think, do all I can, 

That there was pleasure there. 

75 



If this belief from heaven be sent, 
If such be Nature's holy plan, 

Have I not reason to lament 
What Man has made of Man? 

Wordsworth 



My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky; 
So was it when my life began. 
So is it now I am a man, 
So be it when I shall grow old 
Or let me die! 
The child is father of the Man: 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety. 

Wordsworth 



76 



Ruth: 
Or The Influences of Nature 

When Ruth was left half desolate 
Her father took another mate; 

And Ruth, not seven years old, 
A slighted child, at her own will 
Went wandering over dale and hill, 

In thoughtless freedom, bold. 

And she had made a pipe of straw. 
And music from that pipe could draw 

Like sounds of winds and floods: 
Had built a bower upon the green, 
As if she from her birth had been 

An infant of the woods. 

Beneath the father's roof, alone 

She seem'd to live: her thoughts her own; 

Herself her own delight: 
Pleased with herself, nor sad nor gay; 
And passing thus the live-long day, 

She grew to woman's height. 

There came a youth from Georgia's shon 
A military casque he wore 
With splendid feathers drest; 

77 



He brought them from the Cherokees: 
The feathers nodded in the breeze 
And made a gallant crest. 

From Indian blood you deem him sprung; 
But no ! he spoke the English tongue 

And bore a soldier's name; 
And, when America was free 
From battle and from jeopardy, 

He 'cross the ocean came. 

With hues of genius on his cheek, 
In finest tones the youth could speak: 

While he was but a boy 
The moon, the glory of the sun. 
And streams that murmur as they run 

Had been his dearest joy. 

He was a lovely youth! I guess 
The panther in the wilderness 

Was not so fair as he; 
And when he chose to sport and play, 
No dolphin ever was so gay 

Upon the tropic sea. 

Among the Indians he had fought; 
And with him many tales he brought 

Of pleasure and of fear: 
Such tales as, told to any maid 
By such a youth, in the green shade, 

Were perilous to hear. 
78 



He told of girls, a happy rout ! 

Who quit their fold with dance and shout, 

Their pleasant Indian town. 
To gather strawberries all day long; 
Returning with a choral song 

When daylight is gone down. 

He spoke of plants that hourly change 
Their blossoms, through a boundless range 

Of intermingling hues: 
With budding, fading, faded flowers 
They stand the wonder of the bowers 

From morn to evening dews. 

He told of the magnolia, spread 
High as a cloud, high over head! 

The cypress and her spire; 
Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam 
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem 

To set the hills on fire. 

The youth of green savannahs spake, 
And many an endless, endless lake 

With all its fairy crowds 
Of islands, that together lie 
As quietly as spots of sky 

Among the evening clouds. 

" How pleasant," then he said, " it were 
A fisher or a hunter there. 
In sunshine or in shade 
T9 



To wander with an easy mind, 
And build a household fire, and find 
A home in every glade! 

" What days and what bright years ! Ah me 1 
Our life were life indeed, with thee 

So pass'd in quiet bliss: 
And all the while," said he, " to know 
That we were in a world of woe, 

On such an earth as this ! " 

And then he sometimes interwove 
Fond thoughts about a father's love, 

" For there," said he, " are spun 
Around the heart such tender ties. 
That our own children to our eyes 

Are dearer than the sun. 

" Sweet Ruth ! and could you go with me 
My helpmate in the woods to be 

Our shed at night to rear; 
Or run, my own adopted bride, 
A sylvan huntress at my side. 

And drive the flying deer! 

" Beloved Ruth ! " — No more he said. 
The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed 

A solitary tear: 
She thought again — and did agree 
With him to sail across the sea. 
And drive the flying deer! 
80 



And now as fitting is and right 

We in the church our faith will plight, 

A husband and a wife." 
Even so they did; and I may say 
That to sweet Ruth that happy day 

Was more than human life. 

Through dream and vision did she sink, 
Delighted all the while to think 

That, on those lonesome floods 
And green savannahs, she should share 
His board with lawful joy, and bear 

His name in the wild woods. 

But, as you have before been told, 
This striphng, sportive, gay, and bold, 

And with his dancing crest 
So beautiful, through savage lands 
Had roam'd about, with vagrant bands 

Of Indians in the West. 

The wind, the tempest roaring high, 
The tumult of a tropic sky 

Might well be dangerous food 
For him, a youth to whom was given 
So much of earth — so much of heaven, 

And such impetuous blood. 

Whatever in those climes he found 
Irregular in sight or sound 

Did to his mind impart 

6 81 



A kindred impulse, seem'd allied 
To his own powers, and justified 
The workings of his heart. 

Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought. 
The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,- 

Fair trees and gorgeous flowers: 
The breezes their own languor lent: 
The stars had feelings, which they sent 

Into those favored bower?. 

Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween 
That sometimes there did intervene 

Pure hopes of high intent: 
Por passions llnk'd to forms so fair 
And stately, needs must have their share 

Of noble sentiment. 

But ill he lived, much evil saw, 
With men to whom no better law 

Nor better life was known: 
Deliberately and undeceived 
Those wild men's vices he received, 

And gave them back his own. 

His genius and his moral frame 
Were thus impaired, and he became 

The slave of low desires: 
A man who without self-control 
Would seek what the degraded soul 

Unworthily admires. 

83 



And yet he with no feigned delight 
Had woo'd the maiden, day and night, 

Had loved her, night and morn: 
What could he less than love a maid 
Whose heart with so much nature play'd- 

So kind and so forlorn? 

Sometimes most earnestly he said, 
" O Ruth ! I have been worse than dead ; 

False thoughts, thoughts bold and vain 
Encompass'd me on every side 
When I, in confidence and pride, 

Had cross'd the Atlantic main. 

" Before me shone a glorious world 
Fresh as a banner bright, unfurl'd 

To music suddenly: 
I look'd upon those hills and plains, 
And seem'd as if let loose from chains 

To live at liberty! 

" No more of this — for now, by thee, 
Dear Ruth! more happily set free. 

With nobler zeal I burn: 
My soul from darkness is released 
Like the whole sky when to the east 
The morning doth return! 

Full soon that better mind was gone; 
No hope, no wish remained, not one, — 
They stirr'd him now no more: 
83 



New objects did new pleasure give, 
And once again he wish'd to live 
As lawless as before. 

Meanwhile as thus with him it fared. 
They for the voyage were prepared, 

And went to the sea-shore: 
But when they thither came, the youth 
Deserted his poor bride, and Ruth 

Could never find him more. 

God help thee, Ruth ! — Such pains she had 
That she in half a year was mad 

And in a prison housed; 
And there, with many a doleful song 
Made of wild words, her cup of wrong 

She fearfully caroused. 

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew, 
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew, 

Nor pastimes of the May, 
They all were with her in her cell; 
And a dear brook with cheerful knell 

Did o'er the pebbles play. 

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain. 
There came a respite to her pain; 

She from the prison fled; 
But of the Vagrant none took thought: 
And where it liked her best she sought 

Her shelter and her bread. 
84 



Among the fields she breathed again: 
The master current of her brain 

Ran permanent and free; 
And, coming to the banks of Tone, 
There did she rest ; and dwell alone 

Under the greenwood tree. 

The engines of her pain, the tools 
That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools. 

And airs that gently stir 
The vernal leaves — she loved them still. 
Nor ever taxed them with the ill 

Which had been done to her. 

A barn her winter bed supplies: 
But, till the warmth of Summer skies 

And Summer days is gone, 
(And all do in this tale agree) 
She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree, 

And other home hath none. 

An innocent life, yet far astray! 
And Ruth will, long before her day 

Be broken down and old. 
Sore aches she needs must have! but less 
Of mind, than body's wretchedness, 

From damp, and rain, and cold. 

If she is prest by want of food 
She from her dwelling in the wood 
Repairs to a road-side: 
85 



And there she begs at one steep place, 
Where up and down with easy pace 
The horsemen-travellers ride. 

That oaten pipe of hers is mute 
Or thrown away: but with a flute 

Her lonehness she cheers: 
This flute, made of a hemlock stalk. 
At evening in his homeward walk 

The Quantock woodman hears. 

I too, have pass'd her on the hills 
Setting her little water-mills 

By spouts and fountains wild — 
Such small machinery as she turned 
Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn'd — 

A young and happy child ! 

Farewell ! and when thy days are told. 
Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow'd mould 

Thy corpse shall buried be: 
For thee a funeral bell shall ring. 
And all the congregation sing 

A Christian psalm for thee. 

WORDSWOETH 



86 



The Trosachs 

There's not a nook within this solemn Pass 

But were an apt confessional for one 

Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, 

That Life is but a tale of morning grass 

Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chase 

That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes 

Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, 

Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass 

Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy guest, 

If from a golden perch of aspen spray 

(October's workmanship to rival May) 

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast. 

That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay 

Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest. 

Wordsworth 



8T 



Ode on Intimations of Immortality 

From Recollections of Early 

Childhood 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight 
To me did seem 

Apparell'd in celestial light. 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore: — 

Turn wheresoe'er I may, 

By night or day. 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 

The rainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the rose: 
The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare: 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth; 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath past away a glory from the earth. 

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song. 
And while the young lambs bound 
As to the tabor's sound 



To me alone there came a thought of grief: 
A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 

And I again am strong: 
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep : — 
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong: 
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, 
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep. 
And all the earth is gay: 
Land and sea 
Give themselves up to jollity, 
And with the heart of May 
Doth every beast keep holiday: — 
Thou child of joy 
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 
Shepherd-boy ! 

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other make: I see 
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee: 
My heart is at your festival, 
My head hath its coronal, 
The fulness of your bliss, I feel, — I feel it all. 
Oh evil day ! if I were sullen 
While Earth herself is adorning 

This sweet May morning: 
And the children are culling 
On every side 
In a thousand valleys far and wide. 

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm 
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arai: — 
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! 
89 



But there's a tree, of many, one, 
A single field which I have look'd upon. 
Both of them speak of something that is gone; 
The pansy at my feet 
Doth the same tale repeat: 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream? 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting 
And Cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness 

And not in utter nakedness. 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy. 

But he beholds the hght, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's priest. 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended: 
At length the Man perceives it die away. 
And fade into the light of common day. 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own: 
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind. 
And, even with something of a mother's mind 

90 



And no unworthy aim, 

The homely nurse doth all she can 

To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man, 
Forget the glories he hath known. 

And that imperial palace whence he came. 

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, 
A six years' darling of a pigmy size! 
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, 
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses. 
With light upon him from his father's eyes! 
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart. 
Some fragment from his dream of human life. 
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art: 

A wedding or a festival, 

A mourning or a funeral: 
And this hath now his heart. 

And unto this he frames his song: 
Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love or strife; 

But it will not be long 

Ere this be thrown aside, 

And with new joy and pride 
The little actor cons another part; 
Filling from time to time his *' humorous stage " 
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 
That life brings with her in her equipage; 

As if his whole vocation 

Were endless imitation. 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 
Thy soul's immensity: 
91 



Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou eye among the Hind, 
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep. 
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, — 

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 

On whom those truths do rest, 
Which we are toiling all our lives to find. 
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 
Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, 
A Presence which is not to be put by: 
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 
Of heaven-bom freedom on thy being's height. 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 
Thus blindl}^ with thy blessedness at strife? 
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! 

O joy! that in our embers 

Is something that doth live, 

That Nature yet remembers 

What was so fugitive! 
The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest. 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest. 
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast 



99 



Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise: 
But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
FalHngs from us, vanishings; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised; 
But for those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections. 
Which, be they what they may. 
Aye yet the fountain light of all our day. 
Aye yet a master-light of all our seeing: 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake 

To perish never: 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor. 

Nor man nor boy 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy. 
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither: 

Can in a moment travel thither — 
And see the children sport upon the shore. 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 



93 



Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! 

And let the young lambs bound 

As to the tabor's sound! 
We, in thought, will join your throng 

Ye that pipe and ye that play, 

Ye that through your hearts to-day 

Feel the gladness of the May! 
What though the radiance which was once so bright 
Be now for ever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower: 

We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remains behind: 
In the primal sympathy 
Which having been must ever be 
In the soothing thoughts that spring 
Out of human suffering: 
In the faith that looks through death. 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 

Forbode not any severing of our loves ! 

Yet in my heart of heart I feel your might : 

I only have relinquished one delight 

To live beneath your more habitual sway: 

I love the brooks which down their channels fret 

Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they; 

The innocent brightness of a new-born day 

Is lovely yet: 
The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from my eye 

94 



That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 
To me the meanest flower that blows can ^ve 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

WORDSWOETH 



95 



The Lark 

Bird of the wilderness, 
Blithesome and cumberless, 

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea ! 
Emblem of happiness, 
Blest is thy dwelling place — 

O to abide in the desert with thee! 
Wild is thy lay and loud. 
Far in the downy cloud; 

Love gives it energy — love gave it birth! 
Where on thy dewy wing — 
Where art thou journeying. 

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. 

O'er fell and fountain sheen. 
O'er moor and mountain green, 

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day : 
Over the cloudlet dim. 
Over the rainbow's rim. 

Musical cherub, soar, singing away! 

Then when the gloaming comes. 
Low in the heather blooms, 

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be ! 
Emblem of happiness. 
Blest is thy dwelling place — 

O to abide in the desert with thee! 

James Hogg 
96 



How sweet the answer Echo makes 

To Music at night 
When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes. 
And far away o'er lawn and lakes 

Goes answering light! 

Yet love hath echoes truer far 

And far more sweet 
Then e'er, beneath the moonlight's star, 
Of horn or lute or soft guitar 

The songs repeat. 

'Tis when the sigh, — in youth sincere 

And only then, 
The sigh that's breathed for one to hear — 
Is by that one, that only Dear 

Breathed back again. 

Moore 



97 



The Light of Other Days 

Oft in the stilly night 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me. 
Fond Memory brings the light 
Of other days around me: 
The smiles, the tears 
Of boyhood years. 
The words of love then spoken; 
The eyes that shone, 
Now dimm'd and gone. 
The cheerful hearts now broken! 
Thus in the stilly night 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
Sad Memory brings the light 
Of other days around me. 

When I remember all 

The friends so hnk'd together 
I've seen around me fall 

Like leaves in wintry weather, 
I feel like one 
Who treads alone 
Some banquet hall deserted, 
Whose lights are fled 
Whose garlands dead 
98 



And all but he departed! 
Thus in the stilly night 

Ere slumber's chain has bound me, 
Sad Memory brings the light 

Of other days around me, 

Moore 



99 



The Grasshopper and Cricket 

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, 

Catching your heart up at the feel of June — 

Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon 
V^Tien even the bees lag at the summoning brass; 
And you warm little housekeeper, who class 

With those who think the candles come too soon. 
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune 

Nick the glad silent moments as they pass! 
O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong. 

One to the fields, the other to the hearth. 
Both have your sunshine: both, though small are 
strong 

At your dear hearts : and both seem given to earth 
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song — 

In doors and out, summer and winter, mirth. 

Leigh Hunt 



100 



There be none of Beauty's daughters 

With a magic like thee: 
And like music on the waters 

Is thy sweet voice to me; 
When, as if its sounds were causing 
The charmed ocean's pausing 
The waves lie still and gleaming, 
And the lulled winds seem dreaming: 
And the midnight moon is wearing 

Her bright chain o'er the deep. 
Whose breast is gently heaving 

As an infant's asleep: 
So the spirit bows before thee 
To listen and adore thee: 
With a full but soft emotion. 
Like the swell of Summer's ocean. 

Byron 

She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies, 

And all that's best of dark and bright 
Meet in the aspect of her eyes: 

Thus mellowed to that tender light 
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less. 
And half impaired the nameless grace 

Which waves in every raven tress 
Or softly lightens o'er her face. 

Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
How pure, how dear their dwelling place. 
101 



And on that cheek and o'er that brow 
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent. 

The smiles that win, the tints that glow 
But tell of days in goodness spent, — 

A mind at peace with all below, 
A heart whose love is innocent. 

Byron 



102 



Elegy on Thyrza 

And thou art dead, as young and fair 

As aught of mortal birth: 
And forms so soft and charms so rare 

Too soon returned to Earth! 
Though earth received them in her bed, 
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread 

In carelessness or mirth. 
There is an eye which could not brook 
A moment on that grave to look, 

I will not ask where thou liest low 

Nor gaze upon the spot; 
There flowers or weeds at will may grow 

So I behold them not: 
It is enough for me to prove 
That what I loved, and long must love, 

Like common earth can rot: 
To me there needs no stone to tell 
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well. 

Yet did I love thee to the last, 

As fervently as thou 
Who didst not change through all the past 

And canst not alter now. 
103 



The love where Death has set his seal 
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, 

Nor falsehood disavow: 
And, what were worse, thou canst not see 
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. 

The better days of life were ours; 

The worst can be but mine: 
The sun that cheers, the storm that lours, 

Shall never more be thine. 
The silence of that dreamless sleep 
I envy now too much to weep: 

Nor need I to repine 
That all those charms have pass'd away 
I might have watched through long decay. 

The flower in ripened bloom unmatch'd 

Must fall the earliest prey; 
Though by no hand untimely snatched, 

The leaves must drop away. 
And yet it were a greater grief 
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf, 

Than see it pluck'd to-day; 
Since earthly eye but ill can bear 
To trace the change to foul from fair. 

I know not if I could have borne 

To see thy beauties fade; 
The night that followed such a morn 

Had worn a deeper shade; 
Thy day without a cloud hath past, 
104 



And thou wert lovely to the last, 

Extinguished, not decayed ; 
As stars that shoot along the sky 
Shine brightest as they fall from high. 

As once I wept, if I could weep. 
My tears might well be shed 

To think I was not near, to keep 
One vigil o'er thy bed: 

To gaze how fondly! on thy face. 

To fold thee in a faint embrace. 
Uphold thy drooping head: 

And show that love, however vain, 

Nor thou nor I can feel again. 

Yet how much less it were to gain, 

Though thou hast left me free. 
The loveliest things that still remain 

Than thus remember thee! 
The all of thine that cannot die 
Through dark and dread Eternity 

Returns again to me. 
And more thy buried love endears 
Than aught except its living years. 

Byron 



105 



On The Castle of Chillon 

Eternal spirit of the changeless Mind! 
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty ! thou art, 
For there thy habitation is the heart — 

The heart which love of Thee alone can find; 

And when thy sons to fetters are consigned, 

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 
Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place 

And thy sad floor an altar, for 'twas trod. 

Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn as if thy cold pavement were a sod. 

By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface! 
For they appeal from tyranny to God. 

Byeon 



106 



Youth and Age 



There's not a joy the world can give Hke that it 

takes away 
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's 

dull decay; 
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, 

which fades so fast, 
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth 

itself be past. 

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck 

of happiness 
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of 

excess : 
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points 

in vain 
The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never 

set again. 

Then the mortal coldness of the soul Hke death itself 

comes down: 
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream 

its own; 
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of 

our tears. 
And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where 

the ice appears. 

107 



Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth 

distract the breast, 
Through midnight hours that yield no more their 

former hope of rest; 
'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret 

wreathe, 
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and 

gray beneath. 

Oh could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been. 
Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a 

vanish'd scene, — 
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish 

though they be, 
So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would 

flow to me ! 

Byron 



108 



To The Night 

Swiftly walk over the western wave, 

Spirit of Night ! 
Out of the misty eastern cave 
Where, all the long and lone dayhght, 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear 
Which make thee terrible and dear, — 

Swift be thy flight! 

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray 

Star — inwrought : 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day. 
Kiss her until she be wearied out: 
Then wander o'er city and sea and land, 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long-sought ! 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sigh'd for thee: 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone. 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree. 
And the weary Day turn'd to his rest 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 

I sigh'd for thee. 
109 



Thy brother Death came, and cried 

Wouldst thou me? 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 
Murmur'd like a noon-tide bee 
Shall I nestle near thy side? 
Wouldst thou me? — ^And I replied 

No — not thee! 

Death will come when thou art dead, 

Soon, too soon — 
Sleep will come when thou art fled: 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight. 

Come soon; soon! 

Shelley 



110 



Stanzas Written in Dejection 
Near Naples 

The sun Is warm, the sky is clear 

The waves are dancing fast and bright, 

Blue isles and snowy mountains near 
The purple noon's transparent might: 
The breath of the moist earth is light 

Around its unexpanded buds: 

Like many a voice of one delight — 

The winds', the birds', the ocean floods' — 

The city's voice itself is soft like Solitude's. 

I see the deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple sea-weeds strown; 
I see the waves upon the shore 

Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown: 

I sit upon the sands alone; 
The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 

Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion — 

How sweet! did any heart now share in my 
emotion. 

Alas! I have nor hope nor health. 

Nor peace within nor calm around, 
Nor that content, surpassing wealth, 

111 



The sage in meditation found, 
And walked with inward glory crowned — 
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure; 

Others I see whom these surround — 
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure: 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

Yet now despair itself is mild 

Even as the winds and waters are: 
I could lie down like a tired child, 

And weep away the life of care 

Which I have borne and yet must bear, — 
Till death-like sleep might steal on me, 

And I might feel in the warm air 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

Shelley 



IH 



To a Skylark 



Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest, 

Like a cloud of fire. 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 

Thou dost float and run. 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight: 
Like a star of heaven 
In the broad daylight 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 
8 113 



Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 

In the white dawn clear 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over- 
flow'd. 

What thou art we know not: 

What is most like thee? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 

Drops so bright to see 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 

Like a high born maiden 

In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 

Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought. 
Singing hymns unbidden. 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 

114 



Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from 
the view. 

Like a rose embower'd 

In its own green leaves, 
By wainn winds deflower'd 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 
thieves. 

Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
)> Rain-awakened flowers. 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us sprite or bird. 

What sweet thoughts are thine: 

I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus hymeneal 

Or triumphal chaunt 
Match'd with thine, would be all 
But an empty vaunt — 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

115 



What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains? 
What shapes of sky or plain? 
What love of thine own kind, what ignorance of 
pain ? 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Langor cannot be: 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee: 
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety, 

Waking or asleep 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream. 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal 
stream ? 

We look before and after. 

And pine for what is not: 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught: 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
thought. 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride and fear; 
If we were things born 
Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever could come near. 

116 



Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 

That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow. 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now ! 

Shelley 



117 



Ozymandias of Egypt 

I met a traveller from an antique land 

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, 

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown 
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command 

Tell that the sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamp'd on those lifeless things, 

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that 
fed: 
And on the pedestal these words appear: 

" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair ! " 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. 

The lone and level sands stretch far away. 

Shelley 



118 



The Invitation 

Best and brightest, come away- 
Fairer far than this fair Day, 
Which like thee, to those in sorrow 
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 
To the rough year just awake 
In its cradle on the brake. 
The brightest hour of unborn Spring 
Through the winter wandering, 
Found, it seems, the halcyon mom 
To hoar February born; 
Bending from heaven, in azure mirth. 
It kissed the forehead of the earth. 
And smiled upon the silent sea. 
And bade the frozen streams be free. 
And waked to music all the fountains, ^ 
And breathed upon the frozen mountains, 
And like a prophetess of May 
Strew'd flowers upon the barren way. 
Making the wintry world appear 
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 

Away, away, from men and towns, 
To the wild wood and the downs—- 
To the silent wilderness 
Where the soul need not express 
119 



Its music, lest it should not find 
An echo in another mind, 
While the touch of Nature's art 
Harmonizes heart to heart. 

Radiant Sister of the Day 
Awake! arise! and come away! 
To the wild woods and the plains, 
To the pools where winter rains 
Image all their roof of leaves 
Of sapless green, and ivy dress, 
Round stems that never kiss the sun: 
Where the lawns and pastures be 
And the sandhills of the sea: 
Where the melting hoar-frost wets 
The daisy-star that never sets. 
And wind-flowers and violets 
Which yet join not scent to hue 
Crown the pale year weak and new; 
When the night is left behind 
In the deep east, dim and blind. 
And the blue noon is over us. 
And the multitudinous 
Billows murmur at our feet, 
Where the earth and ocean meet. 
And all things seem only one 
In the universal Sun. 

Sheli^ey 



120 



Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art- 
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, 
And watching, with eternal lids apart. 
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, 
The moving waters at their priestlike task 
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, 
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask 
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors: — 
No, — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, 
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast 
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell. 
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest; 

Still, still to hear her tender taken breath, 
And so live ever, — or else swoon to death. 

Keats 

When I have fears that I may cease to be 
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, 
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry 
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain: 
When I behold, upon the night's starred face. 
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 
And think that I may never live to trace 
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance: 
And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour! 
That I shall never look upon thee more. 
Never have relish in the fairy power 
Of unreflecting love — then on the shore 
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think 
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. 

Keats 
121 



Ode To a Nightingale 

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk. 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot. 
But being too happy in thine happiness, — 

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees. 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 

Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been 

Cool'd a long age In the deep-delved earth. 
Tasting of Flora and the country green. 

Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! 
O for a beaker full of the warm South. 
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim. 
And purple-stained mouth: 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen. 

And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

What thou among the leaves hast never known. 

The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 
122 



Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs. 
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies 

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
And leaden-eyed despairs; 
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes. 

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, 

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 
But on the viewless wings of poesy. 

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: 
Already with thee! tender is the night. 
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne. 

Clustered around by all her starry fays; 
But here there is no light, 
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy 
ways. 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet. 

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs. 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 
While hawthorne, and the pastoral eglantine; 

Fast fading violets covered up in leaves; 
And mid-May's eldest child. 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. 

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 

Darkling I listen; and for many a time 
I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
123 



Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 
To take into the air my quiet breath; 

Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 

To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such an ecstasy! 

Still would'st thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
To thy high requiem become a sod. 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! 

No hungry generations tread thee down; 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown: 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 

She stood in tears amid the alien com: 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 

Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn. 

Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 

To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 
Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 
Adieu! Adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 
Past the near meadows, over the still stream. 

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep 
In the next alley glades: 
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 

Fled is that music : — ^Do I wake or sleep ? 

Keats 



I remember, I remember 

The house where I was bom. 
The little window where the sun 

Came peeping in at mom; 
He never came a wink too soon 

Nor brought too long a day: 
But now I often wish the night 

Had borne my breath away. 

I remember, I remember 

The roses red and white. 
The violets, and the lily-cups — 

Those flowers made of light! 
The lilacs where the robin built. 

And where my brother set 
The laburnum on his birth-day — 

The tree is living yet! 

I remember, I remember 

Where I was used to swing, 
And thought the air must rush as fresh 

To swallows on the wing: 
My spirit flew in feathers then 

That is so heavy now, 
And summer pools could hardly cool 

The fever on my brow. 

I remember, I remember 

The fir trees dark and high: 
I used to think their slender tops 

Were close against the sky; 
125 



It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 'tis little joy 
To know I'm farther off from Heaven 

Than when I was a boy. 

Hood 



126 



From In Memoriam* 

Thou seemed human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood Thou — 
Our wills are ours we know not how: 

Our wills are ours to make them Thine. 

Our little systems have their day : 

They have their day and cease to be: 
They ar6 but broken lights of Thee. 

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

We have but faith: we cannot know: 
For knowledge is of things we see; 
And yet we trust it comes from Thee, 

A beam in darkness: let it grow. 

I held it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping stones 

Of their dead selves to higher things. 

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 
These leaves that redden to the fall; 
And in my heart if calm at all. 

If any calm a calm despair. 



By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
127 • 



I hold it true whate'er befall, 

I feel it when I sorrow most ; 

'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all. 

(Of Lazarus) 

Behold a man raised up by Christ! 
The rest remaineth unrevealed: 
He told it not; or something sealed 

The lips of the Evangelist. 

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
Whose loves in higher love endure: 
What souls possess themselves so pure, 

Or is there blessedness like theirs .^^ 

Leave thou thy sister when she prays. 
Her early Heaven, her happy views : 
Nor thou with shadowed hints confuse 

A life that leads melodious days. 

]\Iy own dim life should teach me this : 
That life shall live forevermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 

And dust and ashes all that is. 

'Twere best at once to sink to peace. 
Like birds the charming serpent draws 
To drop headforemost in the jaws 

Of vacant darkness and to cease. 

128 



[The above thoughts are such] 
Which he may read that binds the sheaf. 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave: 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
In roarings round the coral reef. 

From art, from nature, from the schools, 
Let random influences glance: 
Like light in many a shivered lance 

That breaks about the dappled pools. 

Wild bird, whose warble liquid sweet. 
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks, 

tell me where the senses mix 
O tell me where the passions meet. 

Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ 
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf. 
And in the midmost heart of grief 

Thy passion clasp^s a secret joy: 

And I — my harp would prelude woe 

1 cannot all command the strings: 
The glory of the sum of things 

Will flash along the chords and go. 

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 
At last he beat his music out: 
There lives more faith in honest doubt 

Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

9 129 



And all is well, tho' faith and form 
Be sundered in the night of fear: 
Well roars the storm to those that hear 

A deeper voice across the storm. 

That God, which ever lives and loves. 
One God, one law, one element. 
And one far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves. 

Tennyson 



ISO 



spring* 



Dip down upon the northern shore, 
O sweet new year, delaying long: 
Thou doest expectant nature wrong, 

Delaying long: delay no more. 

What stays thee from the clouded noons 
Thy sweetness from its proper place? 
Can trouble live with April days. 

Or sadness in the summer noons? 

Bring orchis, bring the fig-glove spire. 
The little speedwell's darling blue. 
Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew. 

Laburnum, dropping-wells of fire. 

thou, new year, delaying long, 
Delayest the sorrow in my blood, 
That longs to burst a frozen bud. 

And flood a fresher throat with song. 

Now fades the last long streak of snow. 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 

By ashen roots the rivulets flow. 



By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
131 



Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
And drowned in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song. 

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
And milkier every milky sail 

On winding stream or distant sea. 

Where now the sea-mew pipes or dives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood, that live their lives. 

From land to land: and in my heart 
Spring wakens too: and my regret 
Becomes an April violet, 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 

TSNNTSON 



132 



Willow Song 

Willow! in thy breezy moan 
I can hear a deeper tone: 
Through thy leaves come whispering low 
Faint sweet sounds of long ago — 
Willow, sighing willow! 

Many a mournful tale of old 
Heart-sick Love to thee hath told, 
Gathering from thy golden bough 
Leaves to cool his burning brow — 
Willow, sighing willow! 

Many a swan-like song to thee 
Hath been sung, thou gentle tree; 
Many a lute its last lament 
Down thy moonlight stream hath sent — 
Willow, sighing willow! 

Therefore, wave and murmur on, 
Sigh for sweet affections gone, 
And for tuneful voices fled. 
And for Love, whose heart hath bled — 
Ever, willow, willow! 



133 



Ode 

We are the music-makers, 
And we are the dreamers of dreams, 
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
And sitting by desolate streams — 
World losers and world-forsakers 
On whom the pale moon gleams; 
Yet we are the movers and shakers 
Of the world forever it seems. 

With wonderful deathless ditties 
We build up the world's great cities, 
And out of a fabulous story 
We fashion an empire's glory: 
One man with a dream, at pleasure. 
Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 
And three with a new song's measure 
Can trample an empire down^ — 

We, in the ages lying 
In the buried past of the earth. 
Built Nineveh with our sighing. 
And Babel itself with our mirth ; 
And o'erthrew them with prophesying 
To the old of the new world's worth: 
For each age is a dream that is dying 
Or one that is coming to birth. 

Arthur O'Shaughnessy 
134 



By the Margin of the Great Deep 

When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty 
skies, 
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver 

gleam. 
With their magic flood me through the gateway of 
the eyes; 
I am one with twilight's dream. 

When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky 
mood. 
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother's 

heart : 
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in vasty 
quietude, 
I am one with their hearts at rest. 

From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and 
love 
Stray'd away along the margin of the unknown 

tide, 
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far 
above 
Word or touch from the lips beside. 

Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink 

and draw 

135 



From the olden fountain more than light or peace 
or dream, 
Such primaeval being as o'erflows the heart with 
awe, 
Growing one with its silent stream. 

" A. E." 



136 



The Shepherdess* 

She walks — the lady of my delight — 

A shepherdess of sheep. 
Her flocks are thoughts, she keeps them white; 

She guards them from the steep, 
She feeds them on the fragrant height, 

And folds them in for sleep. 

She roams maternal hills and bright, 

Dark valleys safe and deep 
Her dreams are innocent at night: 

The chastest stars may peep. 
She walks — the lady of my delight — 

A shepherdess of sheep. 

She holds her little thoughts in sight. 

Though gay they run and leap. 
She is so circumspect and right: 

She has her soul to keep. 
She walks — the lady of my delight — 

A shepherdess of sheep. 

Alice Meyneli. 



* From Later Poems by Alice Meynell, by permission of 
John Lane Company. 

137 



Genius Loci 

Peace, Shepherd, peace ! What boots it singing on ? 
Since long ago grace-giving Phoebus died, 
And all the train that loved the stream-bright side 
Of the poetic mount with him are gone 
Beyond the shores of Styx and Acheron, 
In unexplored realms of night to hide. 
The clouds that strew their shadows far and wide 
Are all of Heaven that visits Helicon. 
Yet here, where never muse or god did haunt, 
Still may some nameless power of Nature stray, 
Pleased with the reedy stream's continual chant 
And purple pomp of these broad fields in May. 
The shepherds meet him where he herds the kine. 
And careless pass him whose is the gift divine. 

Margaret S. Woods 



138 



The generous reader will understand the motives 
which urge me to include among these collections of 
Song, My Prayer, written by my brother when we 
were members of the same class at Cornell University, 
an institution " where " in the words of its founder, 
" any person can find instruction in any study." 
This poem, together with its setting in the brief 
story of my brother's life, seems to illustrate the 
soul's groping after the inner truths, and the sad 
battle all must wage in freeing themselves from the 
blight of creed. 

My mother and father left the hills, and lakes, 
the witching heather, the mists and mysteries of 
Scotland upon a long wedding journey to America. 
My father was then twenty-five, my mother fifteen. 
My mother had drank deep at the springs of Scotch 
song. Father was of the robust, practical mind, 
and introduced into America the manufacture of 
knitted fabrics which has since grown into such vast 
proportions in the cities of Amsterdam, Cohoes and 
Troy, and throughout the South and West. My 
parents were of the Presbyterian faith, but later 
learned that life may be far greater and better than 
any word-creed ever evolves. My brother, through 
the powerful influence of environment, and under 
pressure of his own spiritual longings, determined 
to devote himself to some religious ministry. At 

139 



Cornell he studied theological doctrine with enthusi- 
asm and patience, but the deeper he went into church 
history the clearer became the truth that religious 
creeds are not only based upon fiction, but that their 
actual working and tendencies have been obnoxious 
to all free, higher development. And though he was 
a man of unusual vitality and physical strength, the 
mental strain and uncertainty of faith shattered his 
nervous system, and the doctors urged him to enter 
upon some more active career than metaphysical 
study would supply. I had the profession of law in 
view, but as my brother decided to engage in the 
business my father had followed, and as we were 
inseparable comrades, I joined him in this. 

Our plan provided that each should be free dur- 
ing one-half of the day to pursue his favorite studies, 
and six months of the year should be devoted by each 
to travel or other occupation. My brother was 
familiar with the French and German, and passed his 
vacations in Scotland and Germany, while I devoted 
mine to a course at Harvard Law School. This plan 
resulted most satisfactorily : our business was success- 
ful, my brother married, and a daughter came to 
bless him. 

On one occasion we went to New York together 
for purposes of business, and had arranged to return 
on the same train. When I came to breakfast at the 
stated hour I learned that my brother had received a 
message from his wife who was in Albany with the 
daughter, asking my brother to meet her there: and 
so he had taken an earlier train. I left New York 

140 



at the hour we had agreed upon — but at Peekskill 
I found that my brother's train had collided with 
another, and that my brother had been thrown 
through the window of the drawing-room car, onto 
the track, and had been carried to a hotel where the 
doctors were in attendance. I found him there con- 
scious, but covered with bruises and hopelessly in- 
jured. He had every attention, but no nourishment 
or care seemed to avail, and after two weeks' nursing 
the doctors summoned me, and announced that I 
must prepare to lose my brother. I then remained 
constantly at his bedside. Our talks and our silence 
alike needed no words to convey that sentiment of 
closest comradeship which the years had built up. 
And finally came the intuition which tells of Death's 
approach. My brother took my hand and said, 
strangely, too, in the Scotch dialect, " Willie, I'm 
going to leave you." " Where are you going," 
I asked, "to Germany?" For I knew he loved 
that land of song and valor. " No," he answered, 
" I'm going to Scotland.^' " What message have 
you to send to your friends ? " And in a faint 
whisper he replied, " Take a sweet song to them all 
for me." There was no more. 

Here did we stop, and here looked round 
While each into himself descends 
For that last thought of parting friends 

Which is not to be found. 

And when my brother spoke of going to Scot- 
land the home of his forefathers — at the very moment 

141 



of his spirit's vanishing, what elusive influence pre- 
vailed? Was it the mighty spirit power of nativity, 
impelHng, 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep, 
Turns again home? 

The temple of the soul had crumbled back to the 
clay out of which it had been moulded, and, as may 
well be hoped from analogy, the spirit merged into 
the universal Power. 



143 



My Prayer 



I pray not for a cloudless life: 

I know full well the soul, like flowers 
Beneath the pelting summer showers, 

Is cultured by the storms of strife. 

I would not wince to drain the bowl 

Filled to the brim with draughts of woe, 
If it were given me to know 

That draughts like these expand the soul. 

Nor for the goods of life I crave : 

Its wealth, its pleasures, where are they 
When on that dread, disastrous day, 

We reach the threshold of the grave? 

This be my prayer: to love the good, 
To do the right, to seek the true. 
To keep eternally in view 

The truth of human brotherhood. 

To tread the paths the good have trod 
In every age since life began; 
My Creed, the brotherhood of man — 

My Trust, the fatherhood of God! 
143 



To sift the creeds of by-gone days, 
That Truth her treasures may unroll, 
Illume and purify the soul 

With her divine, unfading rays. 

Nor deem it more a truth when found 
Embodied in established creeds, 
Nor less when tangled in the weeds 

Of doctrines taught on Pagan ground. 

For truth is none the more a gem 
When uttered by Angelic tongue, 
Than when in weaker measures sung 

By poor, uncertain sons of men. 

0, may I evermore aspire, 

Where'er, enchained in error's thral), 
I see a weaker brother fall. 

To lift his sinking spirit higher. 

To live, that, as the seasons fly, 
The close of each recurring year, 
May find me higher in the sphere 

Of manhood's true nobility. 

And whether I shall live again 
In some celestial far-off sphere. 
Or perish with the fleeting here, 

I trust I had not lived in vain. 
144 



For though the soul may cease to shine, 
The radiant sparks of Hght it shed, 
Will glimmer, when itself is dead, 

In other lives through endless time. 

James Davidson Maxwell 



10 145 



To A Waterfowl* 

Whither midst falling dew, 

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong. 
As darkly seen against the crimson sky. 
Thy figure floats along. 

Seekst thou the plashy brink 

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
On the chafed ocean-side? 

There is a Power whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, — 
The desert and illimitable air — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned. 

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
Though the dark night is near. 



* Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poems, by permis 
sion of D. Appleton & Company. 

146 



And soon that toil shall end: 

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows: reeds shall bend, 
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given 
•And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 
flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone. 
Will lead my steps aright. 

Bryant 



147 



The Yellow Violet* 

When beechen buds begin to swell, 

And woods the blue bird's warble know, 

The yellow violet's modest bell 

Peeps from the last year's leaves below. 

As russet fields their green resume, 
Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare. 

To meet thee, when thy faint perfume 
Alone is in the virgin air. 

Of all her train, the hands of Spring 
First plant thee in the watery mould. 

And I have seen thee blossoming 
Beside the snowbank's edges cold. 

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view 
Pole skies, and chilling moisture sip 

Has bathed thee in his own bright hue. 
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. 

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat. 
And earthward bent thy gentle eye. 

Unapt the passing view to meet 

When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. 



* Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poem5, by permis- 
sion of D. Appleton & Company. 

148 



Oft, in the sunless April day 

Thy early smile has stayed my walk; 

But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, 
I passed thee on thy humble stalk. 

So they who climb to wealth forget 
The friends in darker fortunes tried. 

I copied them — ^but I regret 

That I should ape the ways of pride. 

And when again the genial hour 
Awakes the painted tribes of light, 

I'll not o'erlook the modest flower 

That made the woods of April bright. 

Beyant 



149 



The Death of The Flowers* 

The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the 

year, 
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows 

brown and sere: 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn 

leaves lie dead: 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's 

tread : 
The robin and the wren have flown, and from the 

shrubs the jay, 
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all 

the gloomy day. 

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that 
lately sprang and stood 

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sister- 
hood? 

Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race 
of flowers 

Are lying in their lowly graves, with the fair and 
good of ours. 

The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold 
November rain 



* Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poems, by permis- 
sion of D. Appleton & Company. 

150 



Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely 
ones again. 

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long 

ago, 
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the 

summer glow; 
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the 

wood. 
And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn 

beauty stood. 
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as 

falls the plague on men. 
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from 

upland, glade, and glen. 

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still 
such days will come. 

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their 
winter home; 

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though 
all the trees are still, 

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, 

The south wind searches for the flowers whose frag- 
rance late he bore. 

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream 
no more. 

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty 

died, 
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by 

my side. 

151 



In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests 

cast the leaf, 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life 

so brief: 
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young 

friend of ours, 
So gentle, and so beautiful, should perish with the 

flowers. 

Beyant 



159 



Voices of The Night* 

Pleasant it was when woods were green 

And winds were soft and low, 
To lie amid some sylvan scene 
Where, the long drooping boughs between. 
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen 

Alternate come and go : 

Or where the denser grove receives 

No sunlight from above 
But the dark foliage interweaves 
In one unbroken roof of leaves. 
Underneath whose sloping leaves 

The shadows hardly move. 

Beneath some patriarchal tree 

I lay upon the ground: 
His hoary arms uplifted he, 
And all the broad leaves over me 
Clapped their little hands in glee 

With one continuous sound: — 

A slumberous sound, a sound that brings 

The feelings of a dream. 
As of innumerable wings, 



By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
153 



As, when a bell no longer swings, 
Faint the hollow murmur rings 
O'er meadow, lake and stream. 

And dreams of that which cannot die, 

Bright visions came to me, 
As lapped in thought I used to lie. 
And gaze into the summer sky, 
When the sailing clouds went by 

Like ships upon the sea: 

Dreams that the soul of youth engage 

Ere Fancy has been quelled: 
Old legends of the monkish page: 
Traditions of the saint and sage. 
Tales that have the rime of age, 

And chronicles of eld. 

And loving still these quaint old themes, 

Even in the city's throng 
I feel the freshness of the streams, 
That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams. 
Water the green land of dreams. 

The holy land of song. 

Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings 
The Spring, clothed like a bride, 

When nestling birds unfold their wings. 

And bishop's-caps have golden rings. 

Musing upon many things, 
I sought the woodlands wide. 
154 



The green trees whispered low and mild: 

It was a sound of joy! 
They were my playmates when a child, 
And rocked me in their arms so wild I 
Still they looked at me and smiled, 

As if I were a boy: 

And ever whispered mild and low, 
" Come be a child once more 1 " 

And waved their long arms to and fro, 

And beckoned solemnly and slow; 

Oh, I could not choose but go 
Into the woodlands hoar, — 

Into the blithe and breathing air, 

Into the solemn wood, 
Solemn and silent everywhere ! 
Nature with folded hands seemed there, 
Kneeling at her evening prayer! 

Like one in prayer I stood. 

Before me rose an avenue 

Of tall and sombrous pines; 
Abroad their fan-like branches grew. 
And, where the sunshine darted through, 
Spread a vapor soft and blue. 

In long and sloping Hues. 

And, falling on my weary brain, 

Like a fast-falling shower 
The dream of youth came back again, — 
155 



Low lispings of the summer rain, 
Dropping on the ripened grain. 
As once upon the flower. 

Visions of childhood! Stay, oh, stay! 

Ye were so sweet and wild! 
And distant voices seemed to say, 
" It cannot be ! They pass away ! 
Other themes demand thy lay; 

Thou art no more a child! 

" The land of song within thee lives, 

Watered by living springs ; 

The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes 

Are gates unto that Paradise: 

Holy thoughts, like stars, arise; 

Its clouds are angel's wings. 

" Learn that henceforth thy song shall be, 
Not mountains capped with snow. 
Nor forests sounding like the sea, 
Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly, 
Where the woodlands bend to see 
The bending heavens below. 

" There is a forest where the din 
Of iron branches sound ! 
A mighty river roars between. 
And whosoever looks therein 
Sees the heavens all black with sin, 
Sees not its depths nor bounds. 
156 



" Athwart the swinging branches cast, 

Soft rays of sunshine pour: 
Then comes the fearful wintry blast: 
Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast : 
Pallid lips say, ' It is past ! 

We can return no more ! ' 

" Look, then, into thine heart, and write ! 
Yes, into Life's deep stream! 
All forms of sorrow and delight, 
All solemn voices of the Night, 
That can soothe thee, or affright 
Be these henceforth thy theme." 

Longfellow 



157 



Footsteps of Angels* 

When the hours of Day are numbered, 
And the voices of the Night 

Wake the better soul that slumbered, 
To a holy, calm delight: 

Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
And, like phantoms grim and tall, 

Shadows from the fitful firelight 
Dance upon the parlor wall: 

Then the forms of the departed 

Enter at the open door: 
The beloved, the true hearted, 

Come to visit me once more; 

He, the young and strong, who cherished 
Noble longings for the strife, 

By the roadside fell and perished. 
Weary with the march of life! 

They, the holy ones and weakly. 
Who the cross of suffering bore, 

Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
Spoke with us on earth no more! 



By permission of Houghton Miflflin Company. 
158 



And with them the Being Beauteous, 
Who unto my youth was given, 

More than all things else to love me, 
And is now a saint in heaven. 

With a slow and noiseless footstep 
Comes that messenger divine, 

Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
Lays her gentle hand in mine. 

And she sits and gazes on me 

With those deep and tender eyes, 

Like the stars, so still and saint-like. 
Looking downward from the skies. 

Uttered not, yet comprehended, 
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer. 

Soft rebukes, in blessings ended. 
Breathing from her lips of air. 

Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, 

All my fears are laid aside, 
If I but remember only 

Such as these have lived and died. 

Longfellow 



A Psalm of Life* 

Tell me not in mournful numbers, 
Life is but an empty dream! — 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 

And the grave is not its goal: 
Dust thou art, to dust retumest. 

Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment and not sorrow, 

Is our destined end or way: 
But to act, that each to-morrow 

Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long and life is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave. 
Still, like muffled drums are beating 

Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world's broad field of battle 

In the bivouack of Life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 

Be a hero in the strife! 



By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
160 



Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! 

Let the dead past bury its dead! 
Act — act in the living Present ! 

Heart within, and God o'erhead! 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime. 

And departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another 
Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us then be up and doing. 
With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving — still pursuing, 
Learn to labor and to wait. 

Longfellow 



11 161 



The Chambered Nautilus* 

This is the ship of pearl which, poets feign, 
Sails the unshadowed main, — 
The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purple wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 
And coral reefs are bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise, to sun their stream- 
ing hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 
Wrecked is the ship of pearl! 
And every chambered cell, 

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell. 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 
Before thee lies revealed. 
Its irised ceiling rent, its rimless crypt unsealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil: 
Still, as the spiral grew. 

He left the past year's dwelling for the new. 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
Built up its idle door. 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old 
no more. 



* By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
162 



Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 
Cast from her lap forlorn! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is bom 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! 
While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice 
that sings: 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll! 
Leave thy low vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 
Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 



163 



Selections from German Poets 



T 



Introduction 

HE following selections are given in the original 
German. Music cannot be adequately trans- 
lated by words, nor can the written song of a people 
find an appropriate setting in an alien tongue. The 
carrying power which goes with the native word and 
measure will not survive in foreign soil. When we 
disturb the shaded haunts of the nightingale, song 
ceases. 

Bayard Taylor well knew how " to sing and build 
the lofty rhyme." He made an able and conscien- 
tious rendering of Faust, and yet how frail a craft 
to bear the precious freightage of the Poet's dream ! 
As an instance of this, I shall quote Mr. Taylor's 
translation of these splendid lines: — 

Und fragst du noch, wamm dein Herz 

Sich bang in deinem Busen klemnt, 
Warum ein unerklarter Schmerz 

Dir alle Lebensregung hemmt? 
Statt der lebendiger Natur, 

Da Gott die Menschen schuf hinein, 
Umgiebt in Rauch und Moder nur 

Dich Thiergeripp' und Todtenbein. 

Taylor's Translation 
And do I ask wherefor my heart 

Falters, oppressed with unknown needs? 
Why some inexplicable smart 
16T 



All movement of my life impedes? 
Alas! in living Nature's stead, 

Where God His human creature set. 
In smoke and mould the fleshless dead 

And bones of beasts surround me yet! 

But lovers of the truly poetic are so keen for its 
enjoyment that language to them remains no barrier, 
and they have free access to the beautiful thought of 
Germany, that mystic land of dreamers who have 
sung and battled, as true poets always have done, 
into the higher regions of both spirit and material 
life. 



168 



Morgens Im Walde 

Ein sanfter Morgenwind durchzieht 

Des Forstes grime Hallen, 
Hell wirbelt der Vogel muntres Lied, 

Die jungen Birken wallen. 

Das Eichhorn schwingt sich von Baum zu Baum, 

Das Reh durchschliipft die Busche, 
Viel hundert Kafer im schatigen Raum 

Erfreun sich der Morgenfrische. 

Und wie ich so schreit' in dem lustigen Wald, 

Und alle Baum' erklingen, 
Und um mich her Alles singt und schallt, 

Wie sollt' ich allein nicht singen? 

Ich singe mit starkem, freudigem Laut 

Dem, der die Walder saet, 
Der droben die luftige Kuppel gebaut 

Und Warm' und Kuhlung wehet. 

Ebert 



169 



An Den Mond 

Fullest wieder Busch und Thai 

Still mit Nebelglanz. 
Losest endlich auch einmal 

Meine Seele ganz. 

Breitest iiber mein Gefild' 

Lindernd deinen Blick, 
Wie des Freundes Auge mild 

Ueber mein Geschick. 

Jeden Nachklang fiihlt mein Herz 

Froh und triiber Zeit; 
Wandle zwischen Freud' und Schmerz 

In der Einsamkeit. 

Fliesse, fliesse, lieber Fluss! 

Nimmer werd' ich froh! 
So verrauschte Scherz und Kuss, 

Und die Treue so. 

Ich besass es doch einmal, 

Was so kostlich ist! 
Dass man doch zu seiner Qual 

Nimmer es vergisst ! 
170 



Rausche, Fluss, das Thai entlang, 

Ohne Rast und Ruh. 
Rausche, fliistre meinem Sang 

Melodien zu! 

Wenn du In der Winternacht 

Wiithend iiberschwillst, 
Oder um die Friihlingspracht 

Junger Knospen quillst. 

Selig, wer sich vor der Welt 

Ohne Hass verschliesst, 
Einen Freund am Busen halt, 

Und mit dem geniesst; 

Was von Menschen nicht gewusst 

Oder nicht bedacht, 
Durch das Labyrinth der Brust 

Wandelt in der Nacht. 

Goethe 



171 



Mignon 



Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bliihn, 
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold Orangan gliihn, 
Ein sanfer Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, 
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht? 
Kennst du es wohl? 

Dahin ! Dahin ! 
Mocht ich mit dir, O mein Geliebter, ziehn. 

Kennst du das Haus? Auf Saulen ruht sein Dach, 
Es glanzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach, 
Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an; 
Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, gethan? 
Kennst du es wohl? 

Dahin ! Dahin ! 
Mocht ich mit dir, O mein Beschiitzer, ziehn. 

Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg? 
Das Maulthier sucht in Nebel seinen Weg; 
In Hohlen wohnt des Drachen alte Brut; 
Es stiirtzt der Fels und iiber ihn die Fluth. 

Dahin ! Dahin ! 
Geht unser Weg! O Vater, lass uns ziehn! 

Goethe 



172 



From Goethe's Faust 

Und fragst du noch, warum dein Herz 

Sich bang in deinem Busen klemmt. 
Warum ein unerklarter Schmerz 

Dir alle Lebensregung hemmt? 
Statt der lebendigen Natur, 

Da Gott die Menschen schuf hinein, 
Umgiebt in Rauch und Moder nur 

Dich Thiergeripp' und Todtenbein. 

Allein die Welt! des Menschen Herz und Geist! 

Mocht' Jeglicher doch was davon erkennen, — 
Ja, was man so erkennen heisst! 

Wer darf das Kind beim rechten Namen nennen? 
Die Wenigen, die was davon erkannt, 

Die thoricht g'nug ihr voiles Herz nicht wahrten, 
Dem Pobel ihr Gefiihl, ihr Schauen ofFenbarten, 

Hat man von je gekreuzigt und verbrannt. 

Dem Herrlichsten, was auch der Geist empfangen, 
Drangt immer fremd und fremder StofF sich an: 

Wenn wir zum Guten dieser Welt geglangen, 
Dann heisst das Bessre Trug und Wahn. 

Die uns das Leben gaben, herrliche Gefiihle, 

Erstarren in dem irdischen Gewiihle. 

173 



Wenn Phantasie sich sonst mit kuhnem Flug 
Und HoffnungsvoU zum Ewigen erweitert, 

So ist ein kleiner Raum ihr nun genug, 

Wenn Gliick auf Gliick im Zeitenstrudel scheitert. 

Den Gottern gleich' ich nicht, zu tief ist es gefiihlt : 
Dem Wurme gleich' ich, der den Staub durchwiihlt, 
Den, wie er sich im Staube nahrend lebt, 
Des Wandrers Tritt vernichtet und begrabt. 

Doch ist es jedem eingeboren, 

Dass sein Gefiihl hinauf und vorwarts dringt, 
Wenn iiber uns, im blauen "Raum verloren, 

Ihr schmetternd Lied die Lerche singt, 
Wenn iiber schrofFen Fichten hohen 

Der Adler ausgebreitet schwebt, 
Und iiber Flachen, iiber Seen, 

Der Kranich nach der Heimath strebt. 

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, 

Die eine will sich von der andern trennen 
Die eine halt in derber Liebeslust 

Sich an die Welt, mit Klammernden Organen: 
Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich von Dust, 

Zu den Gefildern hoher Ahnen, 
O giebt es Geister in der Luft, 

Die zwischen Erd' und Himmel herrschend weben. 
So steiget nieder aus dem goldnen Duft 

Und fuhi't mich weg zu neuen, buntem Leben! 

Ach wenn in unsrer engen Zelle 

Die Lampe freundlich wieder brennt, 
174 



Dann wird's in unserm Busen helle, 
Im Herzen, das sich selber kennt. 

Vernunft fangt wieder an zu sprechen 
Und HofFnung wieder an zu bliihen ; 

Man sehnt sich nach des Lebens Bachen, 
Ach! nach des Lebens Quelle hin. 

Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir Alles, 

Warum ich bat, Du hast mir nicht umsonst 

Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet, 

Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Konigreich, 

Kraft, sie zu fiihlen, zu geniessen. Nicht 

Kalt stannenden Besuch eriaubst du nur, 

Vergonnest mir, in ihre tiefe Brust 

Wie in den Busen eines Freunds zu schauen, 

Du fiihrst die Reihe der Lebendigen 

Vor mir vorbei und lehrst mich meine Briider 

Im stillen Busch, in Luft und Wasser Kennen. 



175 



An Die Natur 

Siisse, helllge Natur, 
Lass mich gehen auf deiner Spur, 
Leite mich an deiner Hand, 
Wie ein Kind am Gangelband! 

Wenn ich dann ermudet bin, 
Sink' ich dir am Busen hin, 
Athme siisse Himmelslust 
Hangend an der Mutterbrust. 

Ach wie wohl ist mir bei dir ! 
Will dich lieben fiir und fiir: 
Lass mich gehn auf deiner Spur, 
Siisse, heilige Natur! 

Stolberg 



176 



Ritter Toggenburg 

" Ritter, treue Schwesterliebe, 

Widmet euch dies Herz. 
Fodert keine andre Liebe, 

Denn es macht mir Schmerz : 
Ruhig mag ich euch erscheinen, 

Ruhig gehen sehn, 
Eurer Augen stilles Weinen 

Kann ich nicht verstehn." 

Und er hort's mit stummen Harme, 

Reisst sich blutend los. 
Presst sie heftig in die Arme, 

Schwingt sich auf sein Ross: 
Schickt zu seinen Mannen alien 

In dem Lande Schweiz: 
Nach den heil'gen Grab sie wallen, 

Auf der Brust das Kreuz. 

Grosse Thaten dort geschehen 

Durch der Helden Arm: 
Ihres Helmes Blische wehen 

In der Feinde Schwarm: 
Und des Toggenburgers Name 

Schreckt den Muselman: 
Doch das Herz von seinem Grame 

Nicht genesen kann. 
12 177 



Und ein Jahr hat er's getragen, 

Tragt's nicht langer mehr; 
Ruhe kann er nicht erjagen 

Und verlasst das Heer; 
Sieht ein Schiff an Joppe's Strande 

Das die Segel blaht, 
Schiffet heim zum theuren Lande 

Wo ihr Athem weht. 

Und an ihres Schlosses Pforte 

Klopft der Pilger an, 
Ach, und mit dem Donnerworte 

Wird sie aufgethan: 
Die ihr suchet, tragt den Schleier 

1st des Himmels Braut, 
Gestern war des Tages Feier 

Der sie Gott getraut." 

Da verlasset er auf immer 

Seiner Vater Schloss, 
Seine Waffen sieht er nimmer, 

Noch sein treues Ross. 
Von der Toggenburg hernieder, 

Steigt er unbekannt, 
Denn es deckt die edeln Glieder 

Harenes Gewand. 

Und er baut sich eine Hiitte 

Jener Gegend nah. 
Wo das Kloster aus der Mitte 

Diistrer Linden sah: 

178 



Harrend von des Morgen's Lichte 

Bis zu Abends Schein, 
Stille Hoffnung im Gesichte, 

Sass er da allein. 

Blickte nach dem Kloster druben 

Blickte Stunden lang 
Nach dem Fenster seiner Lieben, 

Bis das Fenster Klang; 
Bis die Liebliche sich zeigte, 

Bis das theure Bild 
Sich ins Thai herunter neigte, 

Ruhig, Engelmild. 

Und dann legt' er f roh sich nieder, 

Schhef getrostet ein, 
Still sich freuend, wenn es wieder 

Morgen wiirde sein. 
Und so sass er viele Tage, 

Sass viel' Jahre lang: 
Harrend ohne Schmerz und Klage, 

Bis das Fenster klang; 

Bis die Liebliche sich zeigte, 

Bis das theure Bild 
Sich ins Thai herunter neigte, 

Ruhig, Engelmild. 
Und so sass er, eine Leiche, 

Eines Morgens da: 
Nach dem Fenster noch das bleiche 

Stille Antlitz sah. 

SCHILLEE 

179 



Der Jungling Am Bache 

An der Quelle sass ein Knabe, 

Blumen wand er sich zum Kranz. 
Und er sah sie fortgerissen 

Treiben in der Wellen Tanz. 
Und so fliehen meine Tage, 

Wie die Quelle, rastlos hin ! 
Und so bleichet meine Jugend, 

Wie die Kranze schnell verbliihn. 

Fraget nicht, warum ich traure 

In des Lebens Bliithenzeit ! 
Alles freuet sich und hofFet, 

Wenn der Fruhling sich emeut. 
Aber diese tausend Stimmen 

Der erwachenden Natur 
Wecken in dem tiefen Busen 

Mir den schweren Kummer nur. 

Was soil mir die Freude frommen, 

Die der schone Lenz mir beut? 
Eine nur ist's, die ich suche 

Sie ist nah und ewig weit. 
Sehnend breit' ich meine Arme 

Nach dem theuren Schattenbild, 
Ach, ich kann es nicht erreichen, 

Und das Herz bleibt ungestillt! 
180 



Komm herab, du schone Holde, 

Und verlass dein stolzes Schloss ! 
Blumen, die der Lenz geboren, 

Streu' ich dir in deinen Schooss." 
Horch, der Hain erschallt von Liedern, 

Und die Quelle rieselt klar! 
Raum ist in der kleinsten Hiitte 

Fiir ein gliicklich liebend Paar. 

SCHILLEE 



181 



Sehnsucht 

Ach, aus dieses Thales Griinden, 

Die der Kalte Nebel driickt, 
Konnt' ich doch den Ausgang finden, 

Ach, wie fiihlt' ich mich begllicktl 
Dort erblick' ich schone Hiigel, 

Ewig jung and ewig griin ! 
Hatt' ich Schwingen, hatt' ich Fliigel 

Nach den Hiigeln zog ich hin. 

Harmonieen hor' ich Klingen, 

Tone, siisser Himmelsruh. 
Und die leichten Winde bringen 

Mir der Diifte Balsam zu. 
Goldne Friichte seh' ich gliihen, 

Winkend zwischen dunkelm Laub, 
Und die Blumen, die dort bliihen, 

Werden keines Winters Raub. 

Ach, wie schon muss sich's ergehen 

Dort im ewi'gen Sonnenschein, 
Und die Luft auf jenen Hohen — 

O, wie labend muss sie sein! 
Doch mir wehrt des stromes Toben. 

Der ergrimmt dazwischen braust: 
Seine Wellen sind gehoben 

Dass die Seele mir ergraust. 
189 



Einen Nachen seh' ich schwanken, 

Aber, ach! der Fahrmann fehlt, 
Frisch hinein und ohne Wanken! 

Seine Segel sind beseelt. 
Du musst glauben, du musst wagen, 

Denn die Gotter leihn kein Pfand 
Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen 

In das schone Wunderland. 

Schiller 



183 



Die Gotter Griechenlands 

Da ihr noch die schone Welt regieret, 

An der Fremde leichtem Gangelband 
Selige Geschlechter noch gefiirhet, 

Schone Wesen aus dem Fabelland! 
Ach, da eurer Wonnedienst noch glanzte, 

Wie ganz anders, anders war es da ! 
Da man deine Tempel noch bekranzte, 

Venus Amathusia! 

Da der Dichtung zauberische Hiille 

Sich noch liebhch um die Wahrheit wand,- 
Durch die Schopfung floss da Lebensfiille, 

Und was nie emfiiiden wird, empfand. 
An der Liebe Busen sie zu driicken, 

Gab man hohem Adel der Natur, 
Alles wies den eingeweihten Blicken, 

Alles eines Gottes Spur. 

Wo jetzt nur, wie unsre Weisen sagen, 
Seelenlos ein Feuerball sich dreht, 

Lenkte damals seinen goldnen Wagen 
Hehos in stiller Majestat. 

Diese Hohen fiillten Oreaden, 

Eine Dryas lebt' in jedem Baum, 

Aus den Urnen lieblicher Najaden 
Sprang der Strome Silberschaum. 
184 



Jener Lorbeer wand sich einst um Hilfe 

Tantals Tochter schweigt in diesem Stein, 
Syrinx' Klage tont' aus jenem Schilfe, 

Philomelas Schmerz aus diesem Hain. 
Jener Bach emfing Demeters Zahre, 

Die sie um Persephonen geweint, 
Und von diesem Hiigel rief Cythere, 

Ach, umsonst! dem schonen Freund. 

Zu Deukalions Geschlechte stiegen 

Damal noch die Himmlischen herab: 
Pyrrhas schone Tochter zu besiegen, 

Nahm der Leto Sohn den Hirtenstab, 
Zwischen Menschen, Gottem und Heroen 

Kniipfte Amor einen schonen Bund, 
Sterbliche mit Gottem und Heroen 

Huldigten in Amathunt. 

Finstrer Ernst und trauriges Entsagen 

War aus eurem heitern Dienst verbannt; 
Gliicklich sollten alle Herzen schlagen, 

Denn euch war der Gliickliche verwandt. 
Damals war nichts heilig als das Schone, 

Keiner Freunde schamte sich der Gott, 
Wo die Keusch errotende Kamone, 

Wo die Grazie gebot. 

Eure Tempel lachten gleich Palasten, 
Euch verherrlichte das Heldenspiel 

An des Isthmus Kronenreichen Festen, 
Und die Wagen donnerten zum Ziel, 
185 



Schon geschlungne, seelenvolle Tanze, 
Kreisten um den prangenden Altar, 

Euer Schlafe schmiickten Sieges Kranze, 
Kronen eurer duftend Haar. 

Das Eroe muntrer Thy rsussch winger 
Und der Panther prachtiges Gespann 

Meldeten den grossen Freudebringer, 

Faun und Satyr taumeln ihm voran : 
Ihre Tanze loben seinen Wein, 

Und des Wirtes braune Wangen laden, 
Lustig zu dem Becher ein. 

Damals trat kein grassliches Gerlppe, 

Vor das Bett des Sterbenden. Ein Kuss 
Nahm das letzte Leben von der Lippe 

Seine Fackel senkt' ein Genius, 
Selbst des Orkus strenge Richterwage 

Hielt der Enkel einer Sterblichen, 
Und des Thraker's seelevolle Klage 

Ruhrte die Errinnyen. 

Seine Freunden traf der frohe Schatten 

In Elysiens Hainen wieder an, 
Treue Liebe fand den treuen Gatten 

Und der Wagenlenker seine Bahn: 
Linus' Spiel tont die gewohnten Lieder, 

In Alcestens Arme sinkt Admet, 
Seinen Freund erkennt Orestes wieder 

Seine Pfeile Philoktet. 
186 



Hohre Preise starkten da den Ringer 

Auf der Tugend Arbeitvoller Bahn; 
Grosser Taten herrliche Vollbringer 

Klimmten zu den Seligen hinan. 
Vor dem Wiederforderer der Toten 

Neigte sich der Gotter stille Schar 
Durch die Fluten leuchtet dem Piloten 

Vom Olymp das Zwillings paar. 

Schone Welt, wo bist du? — Kehre wieder, 

Holdes Blutenalter der Natur! 
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder 

Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur. 
Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde, 

Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick, 
Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde 

Blieb der Schatten nur zuriick. 

Alle jenen Bliiten sind gef alien. 

Von des Mordes schauerlichem Wehn; 
Einen zu bereichem unter alien, 

Musste diese Gotterwelt vergehn, 
Traurig such' ich an dem Sternebogen, 

Dich, Selene, find' ich dort nicht mehr; 
Durch die Walder ruf ich, durch die Wogen, 

Ach ! sie wiederhallen leer ! 

Unbewusst der Freuden, die sie schenket, 
Sle entziickt von ihrer Herrlichkelt, 

Sie gewahr des Geistes, der sie lenket, 
Sel'ger nie durch meine Seligkeit, 
187 



Fiihllos selbst fiir ihres Kunstlers Ehre, 
Gleich dem toten Schlag der Pendeluhr. 

Dient sie Knechtisch dem Gesetz der Schwere, 
Die entgotterte Natur. 

Morgen wieder neu sich zu entblnden 

Wiihlt sie heute sich ihr eignes Grab, 
Und am ewig gleicher Spindel winden 

Sich von selbst die Monde auf und ab, 
Miissig kehrten zu dem Dichterlande, 

Heim die Gotter, unnutz einer Welt, 
Die, entwachsen ihrem Gangelbande, 

Sich durch eignes Schweben halt. 

Ja, sie kehrten heim, und alles schone, 

AUes Hohe nahmen sie mit fort, 
Alle Farben, alle Lebenstone, 

Und uns blieb nur das entseelte Wort, 
Aus der Zeitflut weggerissen, schweben 

Sie gerettet auf des Pindus Hohn; 
Was unsterblich im Gesang soil leben. 

Muss in Leben untergehn. 

Schiller 



188 



Schafers Sonntagslied 

Das ist der Tag des Herrn, 
Ich bin allein auf weiter Flur: 
Noch eine Morgenglocke nur 

Nun stille nah und fern. 

Anbetend knie ich hier, 
O susses Graun, geheimes Wehn, 
Als knieten viele Ungesehn 

Und beteten mit mir! 

Der Himmel nah und fern 
Er ist so klar und feuerlich, 
So ganz, als wollt er offnen sich, 

Das ist der Tag des Herrn. 

Uhland 



189 



Abendlied 

Ich stand auf Berges Halde 
Als heim die Sonne ging, 

Und sah, wie iiber'm Walde 
Des Abends Goldnetz hing. 

Des Himmels Wolken thauten 
Der Erde Frieden zu, 

Beim Abendglocken lauten 
Ging die Natur zu Ruh. 

Ich sprach: O Herz, empfinde 
Der Schopfung stille nun, 

Und Schick' mit jedem Kinde 
Der Flur dich auch, zu ruhn. 

Die Blumen alle schliessen 
Die Augen allgemach, 

Und alle Wellen fliessen 
Besanftiget im Bach. 

Nun hat der miide Sylphe 
Sicho unter's Blatt gesetzt, 

Und die LibelP am Schilfe 
Entschlummert thaubenetzt. 
190 



Es ward dem goldenen Kafer 
Zur Wieg' ein Rosenblatt: 

Die Herde mit dem Schafer 
Sucht ihre Lagerstatt. 

Die Lerche sucht aus Luften 
Ihr feuchtes Nest im Klee, 

Und in des Waldes Schluften 
Ihr Lager Hirsch und Reh. 

Wer sein ein Huttchen nennet 
Ruht nun darin sich aus, 

Und wen die Fremde trennet, 

Den tragi ein Traum nach Haus. 

Mich f asset ein Verlangen, 

Dass ich zu dieser Frist 
Hinauf nicht kann gelangen, 

Wo meine Heimath ist. 

RiJCKERT 



191 



Zwei Wiinsche 

Zwei Wiinsche sind es, die mich riihren: 
Dass jenseits mir zu meiner Arbeit Lohn 
Die Ruhe werd', und hier mir bleib' ein Sohn 

Mein unterbrochenes Wirken fortzufiihren. 

Dort hoff' ich, dass vom Rauch gelautert meine 
Flamme 

Durch Ewigkeiten fort wird gliihn, 
Hier Zweig um Zweig von meinem Stamme 

Auf Gottes schoner Erde fort v/ird bliihn. 

O Doppelewigkeit der Blume! 

Wie sie beriihrt des Todes Hauch, 
Es lebt ihr Duft im Heiligthume, 

Es bliebt ihr Sam' auf Erden auch. 

RiJCKERT 



193 



Die Sterbende Blume 

HofFe! du erlebst es noch. 

Dass der Friihling wiederkehrt 
HofFen alle Baume doch, 

Die des Herbstes Wind verheert. 
HofFen mit der stillen Kraft 

Ihrer Knospen winterlang, 
Bis sich wieder regt der Saft, 

Und ein neues Griin entsprang. 

"Ach, ich bin kein starker Baum, 

Der ein Sommertausend lebt, 
Nach vertraumten Wintertraum 

Neue Lenzgedichte webt. 
Ach, ich bin die Blume nur, 

Die des Maies Kuss geweckt, 
Und von der nicht bleibt die Spur, 

Wie das weisse Grab sie deckt." 

Wenn du den die Blume bisst, 

O bescheidenes Gemiith, 
Troste dich, beschieden ist 

Samen alleon, was da bliiht. 
Lass den Sturm des Todes doch 

Deinen Lebensstaub verstreun, 
Aus dem Staube wirst du noch 

Hundertmal dich selbt erneuen. 
13 193 



" Ja es werden nach mir bliihn 

Andre, die mir ahnlich sind: 
Ewig ist das ganze Griin, 

Nur das einzle welkt geschwind. 
Aber sind sie, was ich war 

Bin ich selber es nicht mehr: 
Jetzt nur bin ich ganz und gar, 

Nicht zuvor and nicht nachher. 

Wenn einst sie der Sonne BHck 

Warmt, der jetzt noch mich durchflammt, 
Lindert das nicht mein Geschick 

Das mich nun zur Nacht verdammt. 
Sonne, ja du augelst schon 

Ihnen in die Femen zu: 
Warum noch mit frost'gem Hohn 

Mir aus Wolken lachelst du? 

" Weh mir, dass ich dir vertraut, 

Als mich wach gekiisst dein Strahl: 
Dass in's Aug' ich dir geschaut. 

Bis es mir das Leben stahl; 
Dieses Lebens armen Rest 

Deinem Mitleid zu entziehn, 
Schliessen will ich krankhaft fest 

Mich in mich und dir entfliehn. 

" Doch du schmelzest meines Grimms 
Starres Eis in Thranen auf: 
Nimm mein fliehend Leben, nimm's, 
Ewige, zu dir hinauf ! 
194 



Ja, du sonnest noch den Gram 

Aus der Seele mir zuletzt: 
Alles, was von dir mir kam, 

Sterbend dank' ich dir es jezt. 

" Aller Liifte Morgenzug, 

Dem ich Sommerlang gebebt, 
Aller Schmetterlinge Flug, 

Die um mich im Tanz geschwebt : 
Augen, die mein Glanz erfrischt 

Herzen, die mein Duft erfrent: 
Wie aus Duft und Glanz gemischt 

Du mich schufFt, dir dank' ich's heut. 

" Eine Zierde deiner Welt, 

Wenn auch eine Kleine nur, 
Liessest du mich bliihn im Feld, 

Wie die Stern' auf hohrer Flur. 
Einen Odem hauch' ich noch, 

Und es soil kein Seufzer sein; 
Einen Bhck zum Himmel hoch 

Und zur schonen Welt hinein. 

" Ewiges Flammenherz der Welt 

Lass verglimmen mich an dir! 
Himmel, spann dein Blaues Zelt, 

Mein vergriintes sinket hier. 
Heil, O Fruhling, deinem Schein! 

Morgenluft, Heil deinem Wehn! 
Ohne Kummer schlaf ich ein, 

Ohne Hoffnung aufzustehn." 

RiicKEUT 
195 



Nachts 

Ich wandre durch die stille Nacht, 

Da schleicht der Mond so heimlich sacht. 

Oft aus der dunkeln Wolken Hiille, 

Und hin und her im Thai 

Erwacht die Nachtigall, 
Dann wieder alles grau und stille. 

O Wunderbarer Nachtgesang: 

Von fern im Land der Strome Gang, 

Leis Schauem in den dunkeln Baumen — 

Wirr'st die Gedanken mir, 

Mein irres Singen hier 
1st wie ein Rufen nur aus Traumen. 

ElCHENDORFF 



196 



Einsamkeit 

Wie eine triibe Wolke 
Durch heitre Liifte geht 

Wann in der Tanne Wipfel 
Ein mattes Luftchen weht: 

So zieh' ich meine Strasse 

Dahin mit tragem Fuss 
Durch helles, frohes Leben 

Einsam und ohne Gruss. 

Ach, dass die Luft so ruhig! 

Ach, dass die Welt so licht! 
Aid noch die Stiirme tobten, 

War ich so elend nicht. 

WiLHELM MiJLLER 



197 



Es ragt ins Meer der Runenstein, 

Da sitz' ich mit meinen Traumen, 
Es pfeift der Wind, die Mowen schrein 
Die Wellen, die wandern und schaumen. 

Ich habe geliebt manch schones Kind 
Und manchen guten Gesellen — 

Wo sind sie hin? Es pfeift der Wind, 
Es schaumen und wandern die Wellen. 

Heine 



198 



" Sag an, O lieber Vogel mein, 
Sag an, wohin die Reise dein?" 

Weiss nicht wohin, 

Mich treibt der Sinn, 
Drum muss der Pfad wohl richtig sein! 

Sag an, O liebster Vogel, mir 

Sag, was verspricht die HofFnung dir? " 

Ach, Hnde Luft 

Und siissen Duft 
Und neuen Lenz verspricht sie mir. 

" Du hast die schone Feme nie 
Gesehen, und du glaubst an sie ? " 
Du fragst mich viel, 
Und das ist Spiel, 
Die Antwort aber macht mir Miih' ! 

Nun zog in glaubig-frommem Sinn 
Der Vogel iiber's Meer dahin, 

Und linde Luft 

Und siisser Duft 
Sie wurden wirklich sein Gewinn. 

Friedrich HebbeIj 



199 



Im Wald, im hellen Sonnenschein, 

Wenn alle Knospen springen, 
Da mag ich gerne mittendrein 
Eins singen. 

Wie mir zu Muth in Leid und Lust, 

Im Wachen und im Traumen, 
Das stimm' ich an aus voller Brust 
Den Baumen. 

Und sie verstehn mich gar fein, 

Die Blatter alle lauschen 
Und fallen am rechten Orte ein, 
Mit Rauschen. 

Und weiter wandelt Schall und Hall, 

In Wipfeln, Fels und Buschen, 
Hell schmettert auch Frau Nachtigall. 
Dazwichen. 

Da fiihlt die Brust am eignem Klang, 

Sie darf sich was erkuhnen — 
O frische Lust: Gesang! Gesang! 
Im Griinen! 

Geibel 



200 



In Der Fruhe 

Andachtig nelgen sich rings die Wipfel, 
Die Lerchen sind wach und die Bergesgipfel, 
Es naht sich der Tag so frisch und jung, 
Mich fasst ein ahnungsvoll' Behagen, 
Mir ist's, als miisst' es endlich tagen 
Auch in des Busens Dammerung. 

GOTTSCHALL 



Am Strande 

Was schreibt die Woge in den Sand? 
Sie schreibt hinein ihr bittres Leiden, 
Ihr ewig Kommen, ewig Scheiden, 

Die kurze Rast am theuern Strand. 

lich aber starr' ins Meer hinaus! 
Mein selig HofFen, freudig Lieben, 
Ich hab' es in den Sand geschrieben: 

Die nachste Welle loscht es aus. 

GOTTSCHALL 



@01 



Index of Authors 



Page 

"A.E.". '^'-]ll 

Bryant, William Cullen 146-152 

Bykon.Lord. 101-108 

Ebert, ]f 

ElCHENDORFF, VON, BaRON 

Geibel, Emanuel, 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 170-175 

Gottschall, Rudolph, 201-202 

Gray, Thomas, ^^"^J 

Hebbel, Friedrich, 1^^ 

Heine, Heinrich, ^ 

Hogg, James, iroia^ 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 17, Zl 

Hood, Thomas, mi 

Hunt, Leigh 

Keats. John. ]f \l* 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, ii>^ loi 

Lowell, James Russell, 

Maxwell, James Davidson, Al 

137 
Meynell, Alice. q7_qq 

Moore, Thomas, ^^^^ 

MULLER, WiLHELM, 

O'Shaughnessy, Arthur, 

RiJcKERT, Friedrich ]lr, ,11 

^ T /"< "C . . 17 /—loo 

Schiller, VON, J. C.t., 

Shakespeare, William mo i<?n 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 176 

Stolberg, Count, • ^ 

Tennyson, Lord, !»' ^^^'f^ 

Uhland. Johann Ludwig. ^^^^ 

Vaughan, Henry, ^^^ 

Woods, Margaret S.. 

Wordsworth, William 

203 



Index of First Lines 

Page 

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by 73 

Alas, ' tis true I have gone here and there, 39 

And thou art dead, as young and fair 103 

Behold a man raised up by Christ! 128 

Behold her, single in the field, 67 

Being your slave, what should I do but tend 26 

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 62 

Best and brightest, come away — 119 

Bird of the wilderness 96 

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art — . . . 121 

But be contented : when that fell arrest 31 

Dip down upon the northern shore, 131 

Eternal spirit of the changeless Mind! 106 

Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky ! 66 

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, 34 

For we believe the poets, it is they 19 

From you have I been absent in the spring, 35 

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, 100 

Hail to thee, bhthe Spirit! 113 

How like a winter hath my absence been 34 

How sweet the answer Echo makes 97 

I heard a thousand blended notes 75 

I met a traveller from an antique land 118 

I pray not for a cloudless life; 143 

I remember, I remember 125 

I wander'd lonely as a cloud 69 

If there be nothing new, but that which is 27 

Is it thy will thy image should keep open 28 

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; 72 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 41 

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore ... 28 

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 74 

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains .... 122 

205 



My heart leaps up when I behold 76 

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming: . 37 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 25 

O blithe new-comer! I have heard, 64 

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem .... 25 

O never say that I was false of heart, 39 

O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends 36 

Oft in the stilly night 98 

Or I shall live your epitaph to make, 33 

Peace, Shepherd, peace! What boots it singing on? . . . 138 

Pleasant it was when woods were green 153 

Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 41 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day ? 21 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 53 

She walks in beauty, like the night 101 

She walks^-the lady of my delight — 137 

She was a Phantom of delight 52 

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eyes, 29 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, ... 30 

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key 24 

So are you to my thoughts as food to life, 32 

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse, 33 

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! 56 

Sunset and evening star, 19 

Sweet love renew thy force: te it not said 26 

Swiftly walk over the western wave, 109 

Tell me not in mournful numbers, 160 

That god forbid that made me first your slave 27 

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, 23 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 31 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 46 

The forward violet thus did I chide: 35 

The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, . 150 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear Ill 

The World is too much with us; late or soon, 65 

There be none of Beauty's daughters 101 

There is a flower, the lesser Celandine 59 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, ... 88 

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away 107 

There's not a nook within this solemn Pass 87 

206 



They are all gone into the world of light! 44 

This is the ship of pearl which, poets feign, 162 

Those lines that I before have writ do lie, 40 

Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view ... 30 

Thou seemed human and divine, 127 

Three years she grew in sun and shower; 53 

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, 23 

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 37 

Two voices are there: one is of the Sea, 61 

We are the music-makers, 134 

What is your substance, whereof are you made, .... 24 

What's in the brain, that ink may character, 38 

When beechen buds begin to swell, 148 

When I have fears that I may cease to be 121 

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced, .... 29 

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes 22 

When in the chronicle of wasted time 38 

When Ruth was left half desolate 77 

When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, 135 

When the hours of Day are numbered, 158 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 22 

Where are thou, Muse, that thou forget' st so long ... 36 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 42 

Whither midst falling dew, 146 

Why is my verse so barren of new pride, 32 

Willow! in thy breezy moan 133 

With little here to do or see 70 

Your love and pity doth th' impression fill 40 

German 

Ach, aus dieses Thales Griinden, 182 

An der Quelle sass ein Knabe, 180 

Andachtig neigen sich rings die Wipfel, 201 

Da ihr noch die schone Welt regieret, 184 

Das ist der Tag des Herrn 189 

Ein sanfter Morgenwind durchzieht 169 

Es ragt ins Meer der Runenstein, 198 

Fiillest wieder Busch und Thai 170 

207 



Hoffe! du erlebst es noch, 193 

Ich stand auf Berges Halde 190 

Ich wandre durch die stille Nacht, 196 

Im Wald, im hellen Sonnenschein, 200 

Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluhn 172 

" Ritter, treue Schwesterliebe, 177 

Sag an, O lieber Vogel mein, 199 

Siisse, heilige Natur, 176 

Und Fragst du noch, warum dein Herz 173 

Was schreibt die Woge in den Sand ? 201 

Wie eine triibe Wolfe 197 

Zwei Wiinsche sind es, die mich riihren: 192 



208 



i 1 o 






,is'' .V 






'^OO^ 









.^^ '<^. 












^ .A 



.■V 






. * H ^ \^ . . 









V', ,-y 












% / 



c^'."^ 






^-..^^ 















\^ '^ v^ 



.^^ 






vOO, 












o » 






v^ . 



'■^^•- .^^^ -V 






: -^%V 



^ oNc,;-^^ 













,0o 









^^v.r 






.•^' .>' 



^^ ■'<^. 



,00. ■' 



\.^ 









xO' 







,-?.'■ 



'j- V' 



. ^?%> « "?■,. .\ 












nO°, 



% .-^ 












s^^ 



^0" ; 



%^4 



A-^- •- 






\/:.-. 



■^.^. 









'."^"„'i 



